No worries. I think I can help. See, I purchased the Steam version of Fallout 3, and when I installed Steam originally, I put it in a location different than the default (\Program Files\Steam\ is the default, I opted for simply \Steam\). The new Operation: Anchorage DLC (download content) for Fallout 3 doesn’t seem to like the fact that my copy of Fallout 3 is in a different place.

Upon starting the game, it looks like the DLC is loaded (it even shows up in the main menu’s “Download” section) but you will never receive the radio signal in your Pip-Boy to start the quest.

If this is your situation, and you’re running Vista, you’re in luck. You need to create a symbolic link. This is basically a “fake” directory that links to another directory.

1. Click the Vista logo and type “cmd” in the search box. If you’re not running as an administrator by default, you need to hold down CTRL+SHIFT when you hit enter in order to get admin privilages.
2. Type in cd “\Program Files\” – or if you’re running Vista 64 like me, cd “\Program Files (x86)\”
3. If you already have another Bethesda game installed (like Oblivion) you’ll want to do this:
   
   cd “Bethesda Softworks”
   mklink /D “Fallout 3” “[put path of your actual Fallout 3 directory here]
   
   Otherwise, if you don’t have any other Bethesda games, you need to type this:
   
   mklink /D “Bethesda Softworks” “[actual Fallout 3’s parent directory here]
   
   Note that I said PARENT directory on that last one. So if Fallout 3 is installed in D:\Games\Fallout 3\, you will want to provide the path D:\Games\ as the second parameter.
4. Everything should be good to go! Run the game and enjoy. Within a minute or two you should get the radio signal.

Hopefully this helps someone else out. I was getting frustrated, having spent the money on the DLC and not getting anywhere. And tsk tsk on Bethesda for not making this issue more well-known.

Ever since Bethesda came out with the 1.1 patch for Fallout 3, I couldn’t play the game anymore. Once I got into the game and started wandering around, I’d randomly “freeze” up… the video would stop updating, but the sounds/music would still play. Keyboard clicks and mouse clicks did nothing, requiring me to ctrl+alt+del and kill the task manually.

It looked like I was SOL until the next patch, but I found some help online:

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.

Surprisingly, this worked like I charm. I do indeed have a quad core processor, so it sounds like this was the culprit. Why 1.1 broke the game for me.. I have no idea. It sounds like Bethesda needs to do some better testing on multi-core processors.

Hopefully this helps someone else out there!

From http://www.austinpc.com/TF2/ (NCSoft):

(second place: girl in a splicer costume from Bioshock!)

——————————

From http://wire.ggl.com/2007/10/29/team-fortress-2-the-best-halloween-cosplay-ever/:

——————————

From http://kotaku.com/gaming/halloween-hangover/how-nihilistic-celebrated-halloween-318050.php (Nihilistic Software):

——————————

From http://kotaku.com/gaming/halloween-hangover/how-ea-la-celebrated-halloween-318045.php (EA Los Angeles):

——————————

From http://kotaku.com/gaming/halloween-hangover/how-blizzard-celebrated-halloween-318035.php (Blizzard Software):

——————————

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/klutzo/sets/72157602826116221/ (Bioware Games):

With the ongoing BioShock saga…

On a whim, I stopped using my onboard RealTek 7.1 HD audio device, and put my Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic back into my machine. I really hate Creative, and have had nothing but problems with their Vista drivers, but figured I might as well give this a shot. Setup the drivers, setup the new Creative ALchemy (to give EAX support under Vista), and fired up BioShock. Wow. 5.1 audio actually works, and sounds pretty decent.

I’m guessing that 2K Games never extensively tested the game with onboard audio devices. This doesn’t make much sense, seeing as over 50% of the users out there use onboard sound for their games. At least according to the last Valve hardware survey. And it also doesn’t make sense to me that every other game I often play (Counter Strike: Source, Oblivion, Command and Conquer 3, etc.) works fine in 5.1 mode with my onboard controller.

I’ve written before how I believe Creative/etc. are a dying breed, with their custom audio APIs and effects layers. This just proves my point a bit more.

Since I can now semi-play the game, I’ll give it a go and write my review a bit later on.

Update: After disabling my onboard sound card, and installing the X-Fi, Vista once again is forcing me to re-activate. What the f—k? I’m getting so tired of this crap.

From a post by 2k Elizabeth, a person who works for 2k Games:

hey guys,

first, let me say this. you DO NOT NEED TO USE THE INTERNET EVERY TIME YOU PLAY THIS GAME. it is only the first time.

second, you can uninstall and reinstall this game, and if, by chance, you have 2 computers you want to simultaneously play this game on, you also can do that.

if by some chance you are reinstalling this game without uninstalling it first, a lot, there is a chance you may have to call securom and get a key, or deactivate some older installations.

but if you upgrade your hardware next week, you'll still be able to play the game. if you revamp your system and need to reinstall bioshock, just uninstall it before you go through the overhaul, and then do your reinstall.

calling it "hardware fingerprinting" is a bit alarmist. we do not transmit any of your data to any companies.

really, the only people who will be concerned about any of these security measures are those who are rapidly putting bioshock on many pcs... if you use the game as you normally do, you won't notice this at all.

AWESOME!

I feel sorry for people who bought the game and don’t have an always-on internet connection. This protection means that the first time they go to play it, they’ll have to connect to the internet.

And I’ll now have to remember to uninstall the game next time I buy a new PC or rebuild my current one. And let’s hope the activation doesn’t fail randomly, because we know that never happens, especially on Windows Vista. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to call a third party (SecuROM) and plead my case. Wonderful!

And guess who doesn’t have to worry about any of these things? The people who pirated the game in the first place.

To top it off, she ends with basically saying if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about. Riiight. Since when is it up to game manufacturers to determine how many PCs I can install a game on?

You win, 2k Games! Truly you have conquered all video game pirating!

Update: Since people are wondering, here are my computer’s specs:

MSI P6N SLI Platinum Motherboard
Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad, 2.4GHz CPU
2 gigabytes of Muskin eXtreme Performance DDR2 1066 RAM
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX PCI-E 512mb video card
On-board RealTek (7.1 capable) Audio, analog mode

Bioshock was released today for PC and XBox 360, receiving a 97 out of 100 over at Metacritic. That’s a pretty excellent score. So of course I decided to purchase the game via Steam. When I went to play the game, that’s when things fell apart.

Firstly, the game’s SecuROM protection would not let the game start. It claimed the activation servers could not be found. Huh? You’re telling me SecuROM is dialing home to make sure my copy is legit? That’s a bit scary.

So I check the forums, and find that if you retry running the game three times, it eventually works (who knows why three is the magic number.) Whaddya know, I’m in! The Bioshock logo appears, my screen goes to black, appearing to load the game, then bam, back to my desktop. Huh? I check my taskbar— yep, the game’s still running. But why did it kick me back to the desktop? On a whim, I exit out of Vista’s sidebar, and I’m able to bring the game fullscreen again without a problem.

Okay, finally.. I’ll be able to play! I see the intro movies. First one shows a list of copyright mumbo jumbo for about 15 seconds. Can’t be skipped. Ugh. Second video is a short Unreal technology logo. Third one is an nVidia logo, also can’t be skipped. Finally, we’re shown a 2k games video, and we’re able to hit escape to skip it. Totally lame.

At the main menu, I go into options to fix my resolution (the game started up at 1024x768, my monitor is natively 1680x1050.) I change the resolution and apply the settings. I go into the sound settings, and change it from stereo to 5.1 audio. Says I’ll have to restart the game. No biggie, I guess. But that means sitting through those logos again.. so I bite the bullet and restart the game anyhow.

Back to the main menu, I finally choose new game. It starts to load, and I’m forced to watch a cutscene rendered by the engine. No hitting escape (can’t even get a button to go back to the main menu!), etc. The cutscene looks decent, but has a “fake” antialiased blur to it. This isn’t spoiling anything for you, but the main character (you) gets into a plane crash in this video. You wake up rising to the surface, surrounded by burning plane wreckage. Guess what problem I run into now?

There’s no surround sound. At all. And the sound coming out of my two front speakers is way out of wack with where I’m at in relation to the sound sources (the fire burning, the ocean, etc.) Huh? I double check my options. Yep, 5.1 sound is set. What gives?

I decide to keep on trucking, walking into a building in the middle of the ocean. Staircases lead me down in front of a bathysphere. There is some “art” on the walls, and banners and such, and they look great. The textures on the bathysphere and the rest of the walls, however, is absolute garbage. It’s like I’ve gone back in time to Quake III-era textures. I suspect that 2k Games made Bioshock to look/work best on the XBox 360 console, and not the PC.. Huh?

I give up and save my game, bailing out to Windows, and hopping on Steam’s forums as well as 2k Game’s forums, to search for solutions. There are none to be found, but plenty of other people having loads of problems. The last time I saw a game launch with this many technical problems, it was called Enter The Matrix. It was a total joke, and nearly unplayable. That’s just about how I feel about Bioshock right now.

I learn nothing from the forums, so I jump back in the game and load my save game. I wait for it to finish loading. La la la. When the save game is fully loaded, I see the screen come up, but all the textures are very very blurry. After a few seconds, they clear themselves up. What the heck? I’m not on a console! I’m on a PC more than capable of handling the game.

I should also chime in that I’m getting tired of Unreal engine based games completely sucking on the PC. They all suffer from the “mouse lag” problem, or 3d audio problems, or 3d video problems, etc… more than any other games I’ve had to install and run. They usually require you to get down to .INI hacking just to play the basic game. Dumb.

I recommend that everyone learn from my mistake: stay away from this stinker, unless 2k Games releases a major update to fix ALL of the problems.

I’m selling my XBox 360 Premium kit. Here’s the Craigslist post, or if you’re too lazy to look there, here’s the specs:

I have an XBox360 premium console, won from the Mountain Dew contest (came out before people could officially buy the XBox360!) Works great, hardly played, and in excellent condition. I've added onto the system over the years. Here is a complete breakdown:

1 XBox360 Premium Console
1 Wireless Controller
2 Play & Charge Kits (lets you recharge your controllers)
1 Wireless Network Adapter
1 HD-DVD Player/Drive
1 XBox 360 VGA Cable
1 Game, Halo
1 Game, Halo 2
1 Game, Gears of War
1 Game, Kameo
1 Game, Perfect Dark Zero
1 Game, Need for Speed: Most Wanted
1 Game, Fable
1 HDDVD, Phantom of the Opera
1 HDDVD, King Kong
1 HDDVD, Serenity
1 HDDVD, The Last Samurai

If you bought all of these things brand new, you'd easily be spending around $1100. I'm selling it for $800, or best offer.

If you purchase the system, you are buying it as-is. I don't believe that Microsoft's warranty covers it now, since it's a launch unit. I haven't had any problems, though. Make sure you have adequate cooling!

If you need photos, I can provide. I will only accept cash, no checks.

I'm asking for $800, or whatever the best offer is. If you know anyone interested, please have them send me an e-mail at iransofaraway AT gmail DOT com. Thanks!

Update: I actually decided to put it all up on eBay. Click here to check out the listings.

Found this online, don’t quite remember where, but it’s a scan from the “Raising the Bar” book about Half-Life 2’s development. If you’re a fan of the game, it might be of some interest to you. I know it was to me.

Also, these people are not the ones who do the voices for the character(at least for the major characters.)

Voice Actors:

Robert Guillaume - Dr. Eli Vance
Robert Culp - Dr. Wallace Breen
Lou Gossett, Jr. - Vortigaunt
Michelle Forbes - Dr. Judith Mossman
Merle Dandridge - Alyx Vance
Mike Shapiro - Barney Calhoun
Mike Shapiro - Gman
Harry S. Robins - Dr. Isaac Kleiner
Jim French - Father Grigori
John Patrick Lowrie - Citizens/Misc. characters
Mary Kae Irvin - Citizens/Misc. characters
Ellen McLane - Overwatch voice

Character Face Models:

Jamil Mullen – Alyx Vance
Scott Lynch – Barney Calhoun
Larry "The Count" Heard – Dr. Eli Vance