Fallout: New Vegas - Open Letter

Fallout: New Vegas Senior Producer Jason Bergman has posted an open letter on the Bethsoft forums, explaining the recent updates. more to come, console fixes and some bug myths:

As you may have seen, we released a patch over Steam for PC users last night. While we didn’t release a full changelist, the patch contains quest and scripting fixes. It’s not a minor hotfix, it contains over 200 fixes in all. We are in the final stages of testing this update on both 360 and PS3 and we hope to have them out to users very soon.

We are also pleased to say that we have just released a second fix for PC users to address the autosave and quicksave issues that some people were encountering. That particular issue was never seen prior to release and it was extremely difficult to reproduce reliably, even after the game had launched. In order to fix this problem we have had to disable Steam Cloud functionality. It has been turned off, and we won't turn it back on until we're absolutely sure it will not cause any more problems. Please restart your Steam client to make sure you get the update.

We are also working directly with hardware manufacturers to improve performance for certain video cards. This is a driver issue, and not directly related to the game.

On consoles, we are aware that a small group of 360 users are seeing a DLC warning which is preventing you from loading save games. We are absolutely looking into this bug now, along with other reports of save game corruption. It is our highest priority right now that we find out what is causing it. In the meantime, we recommend you save often, and revert to an older save if this occurs.

As far as general memory and instability, you should see an improvement once the patch goes live, but we are continuing to work on this based on user feedback.

We want everyone to know that we are monitoring the forums and cataloging every single issue we see reported. We’re reading forum posts, we’re checking Twitter, and we’re reading Facebook comments. We aren’t able to reply to most threads, but we’re listening. If we see an issue, we have people here trying to reproduce it so we can fix it.

While there are definitely legitimate issues out there, we wanted to take a moment to address a couple of things that have been reported as “bugs.”

The now infamous Doc Mitchell video, while very funny (and horrifying) was not a bug. Unfortunately during our launch day, there was a brief window where Steam was pushing out corrupt or incorrect files. In the event that a user wound up with a corrupt meshes.bsa file, they would get that error. It was easily (and instantly) corrected by simply re-validating your files with Steam. At most, a handful of people ever saw that issue, and even then, only for a moment before fixing it.

We have seen forum posts where people are claiming they are not getting all of their perks. Again, this is not a bug. In Fallout: New Vegas, you receive perks every other level, not every level as you do in Fallout 3.

And finally, a quick tip: Be aware of your faction status before assuming the game is broken. Factions will react very strongly to you based on your current armor. If you’re wearing Powder Ganger or Caesar’s Legion armor, you will be shot on sight by the NCR (and vice versa). Also note that there are groups of renegade Powder Gangers (known simply as “Escaped Convicts”) who will shoot you regardless of your faction status.

Please post any issues you are having to our forums and we’ll do our best to fix them as quickly as possible.

Thanks,

The Fallout: New Vegas Teams at Obsidian and Bethesda

More information.

Most problems I had could be fixed by editing the fallout.in a few edits and the game ran smoother.I had to do the same thing with fallout 3.

Definitely hate to see how many folks are seeing stuff they don't like or not paying attention and getting unexpected results and shouting 'bug' about everything!

Finally ran into a quest bug working for ncr and told to blow up the brotherhood base and it was already destroyed.What fun cant advance any further.

I've only started, but haven't seen any real big bugs yet. Once it crashed when I pushed continue. After I reloaded the game it was fine. Haven't had it do that again.

A little more disturbing was Cheyenne's eyes were on his torso and the eye sockets were empty. Eck, zombie dog. Went to sleep and the dog was back to normal again.

Originally Posted by txa1265
Definitely hate to see how many folks are seeing stuff they don't like or not paying attention and getting unexpected results and shouting 'bug' about everything!

I agree. It's as people wouldn't be able to think.

I wonder whether this is a direct result of question marks, exclamation marks and stuff floating over NPCs heads ?

If so, what get we next in that ? Signs floating which faction they belong ? If they are hungry or belly-full ?

I found a bug/glitch that is very consistant. The brown radscorpions have a habit of being stuck in the ground. Half in and half out. Not really that big a deal, but it's a pain trying to shoot them in the only exposed part, the tail.

Can someone explain companion control screen to me? I may be using it wrong. I've tried to make one of my companions passive in combat. The little sucker has a habit of dying.

Anyways, I try making him passive in the companion control screen and it still will start shooting any enemy it sees. I try turning it on through the dialogue. Same thing happens, shoot first be passive second. I've tried turning it on in a building and then leaving thinking maybe it needs to reload the configuration in a new area, but nope it plays it's little song whenever it sees an enemy and attacks.

I just want the poor little sucker to stop dying because he keeps taking on Giant Radscorpions. I can't even survive against those guys.

EDIT: Nevermind. Found the solution. Just quit the game and restart. It stays out of combat now.

I get big pink sqaures over some of the loading screens and in the menu. The first thing I see when I load the game is a pink screen that shifts from pink to fusia. Didn't know what to make of it at first. It doesn't affect the actual game though. The game has crashed to desktop a few times. Having fun and hoping they'll keep patching it.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
I found a bug/glitch that is very consistant. The brown radscorpions have a habit of being stuck in the ground. Half in and half out. Not really that big a deal, but it's a pain trying to shoot them in the only exposed part, the tail.

Seen that a few times in FO3 also. Often with radscorpions, but sometimes with wild dogs or molerats as well.

Yea, I remember those glitches as well. Bark Scorpions are getting the short end of the stick this time around. Poor suckers don't stand a chance when they can't even attack back

I forgot to mention the mouse acceleration fix. This is not really bug related, but it was annoying in Fallout 3 and it's annoying in New Vegas.

Just add these lines to your [controls] section in the Fallout_default.ini:

fForegroundMouseAccelBase=0
fForegroundMouseAccelTop=0
fForegroundMouseBase=0
fForegroundMouseMult=0


Located in - (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas, or a similar directory)

Not sure if the location is different for the non-steam versions

The last line in [controls] should be this "bBackground Keyboard=1" Just copy it after that.

I have encountered 2 bugs I didn't see in F3. One is consistent and keeps displaying some graphical errors when I am outside, like a white/grey/black dot/square that looks like a burned spot in a film roll that will appear now and then very fast and then disappear. A bit like the old Fallout introes to make them seem old.

Edit: However its not something that bugs me very much.

And then I encountered a one time bug where my pipboy would be shown in a bright green color/light that made it impossible to read anything. However that was fixed by quick saving and reloading.

Originally Posted by Foss
And then I encountered a one time bug where my pipboy would be shown in a bright green color/light that made it impossible to read anything. However that was fixed by quick saving and reloading.

I had that in FO3 too (but oddly only in one of my playthroughs), with the same fix.

And then I encountered a one time bug where my pipboy would be shown in a bright green color/light that made it impossible to read anything. However that was fixed by quick saving and reloading.

I've had that one happen in FO3 and once in NV. Toggling my pipboylight on and off has always fixed it for me. Seems like it was rendering the pipboy lightsource overtop the interface.

Also the misunderstanding of the factions (despite the warnings when you put on faction armors) have been really common. My roomate was absolutely certain he screwed up his game and had to restart when he walked into the Vicki and Vance casino and the entire group of towns people kept killing him. I immediately thought to ask him "what armor are you wearing." He was, of course, wearing powder ganger armor because he had misread what the NPC outside of town told him and thought it was a town of powder gangers rather than under siege. IE- he thought the residents were all members of the powder gangs… Some people are a little to used to skimming over what NPCs tell them- sometimes it's actually important.

I'm somewhat surprised the engine is still as buggy as it is. You'd think these old bugs would be fixed at some point.

That was my feeling as well. It sounds like many of them are Gamebryo engine problems rather than its adaptation for FO3/NV. Does Gamebryo not support its engine with regular updates?

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Not sure if the location is different for the non-steam versions

It's Steamworks DRM, so all versions are Steam

Originally Posted by Thrasher
That was my feeling as well. It sounds like many of them are Gamebryo engine problems rather than its adaptation for FO3/NV. Does Gamebryo not support its engine with regular updates?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Gamebryo is *fine*, it's Bethesda's adaptations that cause problems.

What info is available to support that claim?

I'm guessing that everyone from Civ4 to Freedom Force to EverQuest has used it, often with success.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I'm guessing that everyone from Civ4 to Freedom Force to EverQuest has used it, often with success.

Yep, pretty much. There's plenty of games around that use it (Often from smaller studios) that have nowhere near the issues Bethesda's games do.

That doesn't imply that the underlying engine is not buggy, though. Maybe they are just better at avoiding the buggy parts of it? All but one does seem unlikely though, unless that one is incredibly hard-nosed about working around engine bugs…

Was Bethesda one of the early adopters that maybe never got around to implementing the workarounds?