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Posted (edited)

In my research with Skyrim INI settings, I figured it would be fun to apply what I've learned to Fallout 3. From this I have created a the following, which is a comprehensive list of all valid settings for Fallout 3(any settings not listed here are invalid and not recognized by the game) along with their default values, with floating point values estimated to four decimal places. I have also added relavent comments left by Bethesda from the Fallout_default.ini file and some of my own. It is not recommended to use these as your INI Files!  Well, actually, on second thought, I totally recommend everyone replace their FalloutPrefs.ini with the one given here and selecting your Fallout Launcher preset again, as the default INI generation mechanism makes a royal mess out of the FalloutPrefs.ini file.

 

Extra tip: Fallout 3 allows you to make a Custom.ini that works just like the SkyrimCustom.ini if you care to do so.
 
Please note that this is not the same as the Fallout_default.ini in the Fallout 3 game directory, which is copied as your default Fallout.ini file at startup. These are the default settings that are hardcoded into the game itself if the setting is not specified to be some other value. In the case of the FalloutPrefs.ini, most of the defaults are determined by the values assigned when pressing the Defaults button in the in-game settings. The rest were gathered from the saveini command with a blank INI with three exceptions.
 
With three exceptions. Those three exceptions are the following, which are required to exist in the Fallout.ini for Fallout 3 not to CTD at startup. It is assumed that the default settings for these three settings are erroneous, and therefore the values from Fallout_default.ini were used. These three settings are:
 

[Archive]
SArchiveList=Fallout - Textures.bsa, Fallout - Meshes.bsa, Fallout - Voices.bsa, Fallout - Sound.bsa, Fallout - MenuVoices.bsa, Fallout - Misc.bsa

[Fonts]
SFontFile_2=Textures\Fonts\Monofonto_Large.fnt
SFontFile_7=Textures\Fonts\Baked-in_Monofonto_Large.fnt

Without these settings, Fallout 3 will CTD at startup.
 
It should also be noted that four settings also had to be added to the FalloutPrefs.ini in order to satisfy the Fallout Launcher that it needed to detect game settings, or are only used by the Fallout Launcher and therefore reproduced here, as they do not affect the main Fallout 3 game in any way:
 

[Display]
sD3DDevice="AMD Radeon HD 8650G"
;This is the name of my video card, which would be the name of your video card. This is the only setting required for the Fallout Launcher not to run its detection.


[Launcher]
bEnableFileSelection=0
bShowAllResolutions=0
uLastAspectRatio=1
;These three setting are only used by the Fallout Launcher, and these are the defaults. They have been changed in the FalloutPrefs.ini below to their most desirable values.

Now here are the default INIs:
 
Fallout.ini

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FalloutPrefs.ini

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Edited by DoubleYou
Posted

Do you recommend changing the Fallout_Defaulf.ini for Fallout 3 based on these? DomI understand correctly that the PalloutPrefs.ini here should replace the existing version and then the Launcher rerun to add or replace values based on the capability of the graphics card?

Posted

I haven't recreated a fixed up Fallout_Default.ini for Fallout 3 yet, although I will soon. As of now, yes, replace FalloutPrefs.ini with one here, then select your preset. The end result should not have a bunch of extra settings, which will show that you did it right.

Posted (edited)

Okay, so seeing how messed up Fallout 3 INIs are, I decided to clean them up a bit. I have gone through the Fallout_default.ini, which is applied to both Fallout.ini and erroneously to FalloutPrefs.ini at Fallout Launcher startup (most annoying) and removed all the erroneous settings and all lines that are not different from the default. The result is given below:

 

Fallout_default.ini

 

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As you can see, I've added comments throughout to tell of the changes from the default values. Most of these changes are assumed to be fixes (a large number of them are at least) and are recommended to be in everyone's Fallout.ini.

 

What I recommend

Edit your Fallout_default.ini file in the Fallout 3 directory to have only the following within:

 

 

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This will cause the Fallout Launcher only to apply these necessary changes to the Fallout.ini at startup. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop it from erroneously copying these to FalloutPrefs.ini initially, however, copying the default FalloutPrefs.ini below and tweaking it to My Games\Fallout3 and then applying your preset will allow you to have only the necessary lines.

 

FalloutPrefs.ini

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Edited by DoubleYou
  • 2 years later...
Posted

The GOG version of Fallout 3 uses a different set of default values for Fallout_default.ini and FalloutPrefs.ini. There are also different INI default files for the other 2 Bethesda games that GOG supports, Oblivion and Fallout New Vegas. These INI files are typically setup for a somewhat more capable system than the INI values found in the Steam version.

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