The Pitt | The Don's Craptastic World

31Aug/090

Must-Have High-Res Fallout 3 Texture Packs for official DLCs!

Back then I listed the "must-have" texture packs for Fallout 3 to greatly enhance F3's graphics. Since then Bethesda released 5 DLCs (Operation Anchorage, The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta), and modders have been going crazy.

There are all kind of HD (HQ, HiRes or High-Res, same meaning different spelling) (re-)texture packs and different (re-)models of pretty much anything on Fallout 3 Nexus. If you still don't know it, Fallout 3 Nexus is the main source for Fallout 3 mods, models and textures.

Running with higher resolution texture packs as always results in higher demand on your computer. Be sure your PC can handle it, don't install all texture packs at once. Install one pack at a time, test it out then continue with the next.

Long story short: I'm quite fond of 4Aces DLC high-res textures [direct link]. Enjoy!

Addendum 17.05.2010:
Like a lot of people who have large amount of mods, especially texture mods, I've experienced frequent crashes to desktop. This is due the fact that Fallout 3 is a 32Bit game which in turn results in the usage of a maximum of 2GB of RAM. If you have, say 4GB RAM or more, Fallout 3 makes no use of it.

Fear not, there has been a solution since last year which I completely missed up until a few months ago. Large Address Aware Enabler for FO3 or FO3 RAM Boost. Either one works and reduces the crashes to almost a nonexistence.

Some Fallout related videos:

Filed under: PC Games Continue reading

29Mar/090

Fallout 3 goes into the Pit – “The Pitt” HD game play clips!

Fallout 3: The Pitt is out, and I'm playing it.

What was a simple and quick "run and grab 10 ingots" turned out to be a "grab whatever ingot you see and explore the zone" Quest!

I'm doing "Unsafe Working Conditions" in the clips. You have to go inside 'The Steelyard' and collect 10 metal ingots. If you get all 100 of them, you can then turn the remaining 90 for extra items. If you play on XBox 360, you get an achievement too.

Love it, it's as good and as interesting as Operation Anchorage. Although Operation Anchorage has got negative reviews, because people feel it didn't "fit" into Fallout 3, they forget that Operation Anchorage was a simulation and a crucial moment in Fallout's history.

Anyway playing 'The Pitt' is entirely different as 'The Pitt' integrates in the actual Fallout 3 time line. After a short while you will get a broadcast signal followed by a message pop-up, same procedure as with Operation Anchorage.

The DLC "The Pitt" isn't long. If you are a slow player, perhaps you get 5-6 hours out of it at most. If you play it fast it'll be even shorter, I'd estimate about 2-3 hours tops. Before you get angry bear in mind that DLC's are NOT intended to be full expansions with tens of hours of game play. DLC's are small content patches which add a few hours at most to the game.

I want to apologize for a few things though in the clips:

1) There are some "breaks" in the videos. Meaning I stopped recording to read a terminal, or to open a lock, or to browse through my pip-boy. I didn't record this because it was unessential to the game play and it would be a waste of space (All 5 clips were worth uncompressed and not trans-coded about 78 Gbyte of Disk Space!).

Don't worry though I usually started to record from this point where I stopped.

2) I did NOT explore The Steelyard to its fullest extend. I did however at the point when I was recording not know this. I got back later and saw I missed a few spots (and Ingots, got my 100 ingots!)

You see, I don't want to re-record this again. Because when I re-record it, I know the spots already, I know where to look and I know what to do. Recording while being in there the 1st time is something entirely different!

Prologue 0/4 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy3Wk-X48Qo
Part 1/4 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBl0leW7Cbo
Part 2/4 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nur7DltuA8
Part 3/4 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKtPTenScTs
Part 4/4 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u50pDYNgw-Y

Screenshots: http://www.the-screenshots.com/Fallout3/Fallout3_ThePitt/

Long story short: Enjoy and don't forget to watch in HD!

Addendum: I've got emails asking me how many ingots there are and where they all are, what the reason is to collect more than 10 ingots and if you get your items back you had to surrender at the beginning of The Pitt.

There are 100 ingots total. Collecting them all is recommended insofar because you get really awesome items. As for the items you had to surrender at the beginning of The Pitt, yes, you will get them back once you beat the Arena and are summoned to the Pitt Boss Ashur.

I'm not gonna write another lengthy guide to each spot of all the metal ingots, since there are tons of them already on the internet. Take this for example, all the spots for all the ingots!