[Multi Multi]

broken steel isn't available yet on gfwl, it got pulled due to bugs more borking by ms and bethseda
from the wiki:
* May 5th, 2009 - PC release downloads via Microsoft Games for Windows Live. Upon completion of download in the G4WL client a message may read: "Install of item Broken Steel failed. Not a cryptographic message or the cryptographic message is not formatted correctly. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8009200D)" This will happen after repeated downloads and the 'retry' button on the G4WL client will not work. Upon investigation of the DLC files themselves (located in C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\GFWLive\Downloads the winrar archive containing the DLC is corrupt and will not extract with Winrar or 7z. Note that this renders the whole DLC unusable. No known fix at this point. The DLC is currently not available to download from G4WL possibly due to this fault.
* May 5th 2009 - Broken Steel has a bug on the Xbox 360 version, stopping players from activating Project Purity. Sarah Lyons becomes stuck on dialogue and does not initiate the dialogue choice of who should activate the purifier.

* May 5th, 2009 - Broken Steel has a bug on the Xbox 360 version, greatly impeding progress for the players to reaching Project Purity. The Enclave soldiers apparently become invincible and do not take any damage unless inflicted by Liberty Prime, Sarah Lyons, or car explosions. Liberty Prime may also disappear.

[Red Bevinz]

If you are running mods, common sense dictates not to use the patch if there is any workable alternative. Why put up with all these problems for minimal gain?

My experience does not resemble 'all of these problems', though.

Deisha has white skin and yes that looks ridiculous, and that sounds like it really should be fixed. An .esp-added NPC has no business looking like that, kinda.

On the plus side, the enemy mobility seems even better than 1.4 (i hope i'm not imagining that, it's hard to put my finger on what's different), and there's a solution to followers being bunched up at teleporting doors that's better than any modders can do, and the issue with teleporting doors not passing NPCs properly in all cases is fixed, and VATS is doing well. The NPC combat AI in 1.5 wouldn't compare with patching this game all the way back to its first version.

If someone tells me "Do not load 1.5 it's got too many problems!" I should rightfully respond with "what the hell are you talking about?" because in my case, with the relatively few mods I run, it works.

I feel like the correct "warning" is this:

***********************************
Patch version 1.5 is known to cause issues with .esp-based mods that do any of the following:

- - - Add npc spawns to the world that are not set as persistant refs (crash upon save)
- - - Add static items to the world that are not set as persistant refs (item will be invisible after a while)
- - - Add human/ghoul NPCs to the world (white skin tone on body).
***********************************

And this is incorrect:

*******************
Don't patch to 1.5! It's fubared!
*******************

The above line is a protest, not a statement of fact.

(I assume the white body problem extends to ghouls).

[Tom]

Does someone know how to take an .esp and convert it into an .esm/.esp combination? Tarrant mentioned that he knew how, and ALOT of us now need the same procedure.

Many of us will need to do this now, I have offered to make the training manual but I need to know how first - and I too will be in dire need of making my exterior cells into an .esm.

Does anyone know this that would be willing to PM me with even a raw version?

Thanks,

M

[GLOW...]

The thing that I find most infuriating is the lack of communication from Bethesda w/ the modding community, which basically serves as a volunteer content-creation and product support team for their company.

If, as Tarrant and others noted, the changes in 1.5 are indeed (in the worst M$ speak): "A feature, not a bug.." in that a lot of core-level problems in navmeshing , etc. have now been fixed, how hard would it have been for Bethesda to say something like:

"We've noted all the issues w/ navmesh, .esm precedence, etc. as reported by the moders. The 1.5 patch introduces changes that will permanently fix this. These changes will make it necessary for current mods that add non-persistent items, etc. to be updated in order to be compatible with the 1.5 patch and beyond. We know it will be a PITA, but the fixes introduced are important to the long-tem modding potential of Fallout 3...." etc. etc.

That they DIDN'T say this just leaves everybody trying to guess what they are up to, and irritates their customer base.... not a good thing.

[Victoria Bartel]

My experience does not resemble 'all of these problems', though.

You have been fortunate, that is all I can try and stress, with the sheer volume of reports I have seen and obviousness of the bugs identified on the front page, this is a problem to, if not the vast majority of mods, certainly a number significant enough a stark warning is warranted.

there's a solution to followers being bunched up at teleporting doors that's better than any modders can do,

It has the exact same effect as the warp script I did several days ago, it just uses the y axis instead of the x axis.

If someone tells me "Do not load 1.5 it's got too many problems!" I should rightfully respond with "what the hell are you talking about?" because in my case, with the relatively few mods I run, it works.

Then by your own reasoning, you should not be surprised when someone else responds in the opposite manner, perhaps we can find a middle ground?

I feel like the correct "warning" is this:

***********************************
Patch version 1.5 is known to cause issues with .esp-based mods that do any of the following:

- - - Add npc spawns to the world that are not set as persistant refs (crash upon save)
- - - Add static items to the world that are not set as persistant refs (item will be invisible after a while)
- - - Add human/ghoul NPCs to the world (white skin tone on body).
***********************************

And this is incorrect:

*******************
Don't patch to 1.5! It's fubared!

The above line is a protest, not a statement of fact.

Your warning isn't strong enough advice. As I have said in above posts, in 1.5 all we have is a few minor fixes to a few rare bugs, several if not all of which can be reproduced and soon will be if they have not been already. In addition, I believe your being overly defensive of the patch in your response here, this quote you have is an opinion, with strong legs and evidence to support it, not a protest.

If you enjoy using mods, there seems little urgency or logic in patching up to 1.5, the volume of possible bugs makes 1.5 a minefield, some mines are obvious and some are not. I don't know how you can dispute that if you really read the front page and accept the bugs which can now be present.

Broken Steel compatibility is an issue and one I hope will eventually be addressed with some ingenuity and a fake patch.

[Joanne Crump]

That they DIDN'T say this just leaves everybody trying to guess what they are up to, and irritates their customer base.... not a good thing.

No communication is why they get hit harder by users when things go wrong. I've a wide varity of experience dealing with many different game developers from a user perspective, and those that communicate are held in higher regard.

For example Crysis Wars had a bug that only effected myself and a very small portion of the Crysis gaming userbase (massive stuttering whenever hovercraft where in use - especially game breaking in multiplayer play), not only did the developers (not Tech Support, not the community manager - actual Devs) actually try to help me with the problem, but they stuck with me until they finally fixed it in a later patch.

With Bethesda it always feels like your being left out in the rain. Especially with comments like "we cannot reproduce your problem" (in regards to VATS), and "don't use user made mods" coming out of Bethesda tech support. You'd think they were a damned black ops organization in regards to telling us whether they are or are not working to fix issues they make.

[Krystina Proietti]

Your warning isn't strong enough advice. As I have said in above posts, in 1.5 all we have is a few minor fixes to a few rare bugs, several if not all of which can be reproduced and soon will be if they have not been already. In addition, I believe your being overly defensive of the patch in your response here, this quote you have is an opinion, with strong legs and evidence to support it, not a protest.

If you enjoy using mods, there seems little urgency or logic in patching up to 1.5, the volume of possible bugs makes 1.5 a minefield, some mines are obvious and some are not. I don't know how you can dispute that if you really read the front page and accept the bugs which can now be present.

Broken Steel compatibility is an issue and one I hope will eventually be addressed with some ingenuity and a fake patch.

I'll tell you what Tarrant told me in a post yesterday when I freaked out about this got very mad - We need to give this some time.

We already know this:

1. The bug reports (The entire thread) went up to the developers as of two days ago - so its in the queue and is going to get looked at.

2. Assuming that Bethesda does not hate modders, and actually does want to encourage us (otherwise why would they bother at ALL with the GECK), then we have to also assume that if it is possible to fix the major bugs, they will do so.

3. We cannot presume that Bethesda has the Ability to release a, "hot fix" patch for this. Even if they wanted to, any patch they produce must go through QA (or we get even more problems or worse problems), and that has to be secheduled. The code time to fix the bug has to be scheduled, which means the project manager has to work that up in the list of things for the next release. All this takes time, and none of it we have good visilibility into (even the moderators don't likely sit with the PM every day to know what's on on the docket).

4. Thus far Bethesda's weakest point (IMHO) is their documentation - across the board, every aspect of the game and GECK are poorly documented - and we know the new GECK v1.5 has lots of fixes that aren't in the 4-item release notes that we got. So this tells us that Bethesda (in general) are not good at communications - with the sole exception of the moderators on the forum (which I must say do Very good work). But that aside, I think we have very little hope of even Knowing if this bug will be addressed or not without the moderators bugging the devs for information. So we need to keep the moderators happy and ask nicely, and often.

5. As broken steel is just coming out, I assume there will be at least one more update to Fallout3 before they stop work on it in favor of the next game. Again an assumption on my part, but if that holds true, they I think it highly likely that this issue will be addressed in some way.

6. As Tarrant and Elminster have already explored, there is a method of turning part of our .esp's into an .esm, which fixes some of the issues. Not something that I will enjoy having to do for my mod, nor will anyone who has made a mod - but there IS a way around the crash/save bug (unless I have completely misread the issue).

So we really need to give it some time - we are not going to get answers today or this week. As many have said, obviously that means most will stick with v1.4 via Fake Patch, and anyone who runs mods will be forced to Not use v1.5 if they want to stay Sane.

In the meantime I have signed-up to write the training manual on how to convert a current .esp mod into an .esm/.esp combination, so that we can start making our mods compatible, and Tarrant has generously offered to send the raw materials over so that I can work it up. So if we do get stuck with this, as someone reminded me, the community will pool-together and sort this out.

Trying to stay positive,

M

[X(S.a.R.a.H)X]

I'll tell you what Tarrant told me in a post yesterday when I freaked out about this got very mad - We need to give this some time.

We already know this:
3. We cannot presume that Bethesda has the Ability to release a, "hot fix" patch for this. Even if they wanted to, any patch they produce must go through QA (or we get even more problems or worse problems), and that has to be secheduled. The code time to fix the bug has to be scheduled, which means the project manager has to work that up in the list of things for the next release. All this takes time, and none of it we have good visilibility into (even the moderators don't likely sit with the PM every day to know what's on on the docket).

3. Beth has a QA process? I kinda figured they just threw the code out the door once it compiled. :banghead:

So we really need to give it some time - we are not going to get answers today or this week. As many have said, obviously that means most will stick with v1.4 via Fake Patch, and anyone who runs mods will be forced to Not use v1.5 if they want to stay Sane.

So if I understand you correctly, you think its fine that we need to use an unoffical "fake" patch just to play the game? And your ok with the game not being able to work otherwise for a week or more? :blink:

[jodie]

No communication is why they get hit harder by users when things go wrong. I've a wide varity of experience dealing with many different game developers from a user perspective, and those that communicate are held in higher regard.

QFT. This is also my experience over the years.

Btw, is there a compiled summary of responses from Gstaff and/or the Devs?
I've only read the last two, very short, comments from Gstaff.
Also like many Community Managers, I'm choosing to assume his hands are tied on what he can and cannot say. :/

With Bethesda it always feels like your being left out in the rain.

Key word being "feels".
Imoho no communication is the worst. Firm unpopular statements (such as DLC for PS3) are far far better than no statements at all.
At least with those, you know where you stand on an issue.

Finally, I think many people are missing one of Beths top priorities with Patches & DLC and that is consoles and M$.
Their releases MUST focus on their largest common denominator, the unmodded F3 customer base.

So, as Tarrant and a very few others have said, it will take some time.
I've seen this current method of minimal or no communication drive huge chunks of a fan base way in droves.

Anyways, I'm starting to float off on too many tangents....

.02

Slight FYI which basically saying "we are not alone" with the 1.5 patch. That core customer base is getting hurt too.
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=986426.

I decided today to download the two latest expansions having been desperate to enjoy some new content in my favorite game only to be presented with the most horrific dilemma. I patched to 1.5 as required for Broken Steel and now LIVE is no longer available to me in game, so I have no access to the DLC that I have just paid for.

[Agnieszka Bak]

3. Beth has a QA process? I kinda figured they just threw the code out the door once it compiled. :banghead:

The QA process is the likely reason that patch 1.5 took so long to show up (patch goes through Bethesda QA, then goes to Microsoft QA, then goes back to Bethesda to make the changes Microsoft wants, then the process starts again).

[Joanne Crump]

I'ma interject a response of my own here - - -

So if I understand you correctly, you think its fine that we need to use an unoffical "fake" patch just to play the game?

The trouble with this is that... the game runs fine with 1.5. You don't need fakepatch. However, 1.5 is breaking mods that do certain things, and those mods now cause a game crash. It's different from actually having no playability in the game itself.

I'm not saying that breaking mods is a positive thing, but let's be realistic about what it's doing and what it's not.

And your ok with the game not being able to work otherwise for a week or more? :blink:

In the case of a problem like this, sure. Their dev team could very easily be tied up with all sorts of [censored] relative to their deadline for the broken steel dlc. They don't have an infinite number of programmers standing about in the wings of their building, ready to tackle every weird thing at absolutely any time. They're a company that works over in Maryland, and stuff, and I bet they have like, desks, and a coffee machine, and yeah. Not like, magicians or fairies. And, not like tinkerbell.

[Kay O'Hara]

The QA process is the likely reason that patch 1.5 took so long to show up (patch goes through Bethesda QA, then goes to Microsoft QA, then goes back to Bethesda to make the changes Microsoft wants, then the process starts again).

I was being sarcastic about the QA process. (Hard to tell on the internet)

The point I am trying to make, is that their QA process is worthless. Its hard for me to imagine more game breaking/altering bugs being let through. Lastly, lets take a quick look at the word QA (Quality Assurance). Does anyone at this point feel assured at the quality of any Beth patch?

Personally I am more assured by letting Quarn take a look at the patch before inflicting it on my games.

[Tamara Dost]

We need to give this some time.

...

1. The bug reports (The entire thread) went up to the developers as of two days ago - so its in the queue and is going to get looked at.

I was saying that myself in the first thread, an official patch could well be a month, an unofficial fix or solution might present itself sooner. There should be no panic but as you sum up well in the rest of your post, no complacency that everything is rosy either.

2. Assuming that Bethesda does not hate modders, and actually does want to encourage us (otherwise why would they bother at ALL with the GECK), then we have to also assume that if it is possible to fix the major bugs, they will do so.

5. As broken steel is just coming out, I assume there will be at least one more update to Fallout3 before they stop work on it in favor of the next game. Again an assumption on my part, but if that holds true, they I think it highly likely that this issue will be addressed in some way.

I am 50/50 on this one, it depends if it is worth it to them financially. They might just say well the last dlc is out now, we wash our hands of it, which is why we need alternative suggestions to fix things. I have the perspective they don't 'owe' us anything, so it really is an 'if they have time issue', otherwise it's down to us to find a work around.

3. We cannot presume that Bethesda has the Ability to release a, "hot fix" patch for this. Even if they wanted to

I don't think anyone is?

6. As Tarrant and Elminster have already explored, there is a method of turning part of our .esp's into an .esm, which fixes some of the issues. Not something that I will enjoy having to do for my mod, nor will anyone who has made a mod - but there IS a way around the crash/save bug (unless I have completely misread the issue).

I will repeat what I have posted above:

'My comments are made to seek solutions which involved minimal disruptions, to the thousands of mods already out there'

Nobody has yet posted a way of doing this, short of each of us manually going through thousands of mods to make them into ESMs, which will likely throw up countless conflicts and bugs in itself.

So we really need to give it some time - we are not going to get answers today or this week. As many have said, obviously that means most will stick with v1.4 via Fake Patch, and anyone who runs mods will be forced to Not use v1.5 if they want to stay Sane.

I agree with your assessment on needing to stay with the fake patch and put our short-term confidence in modders, with a fingers crossed look on the horizon for a 1.55 or 1.6.
However, we may well get an answer tomorrow or the next day etc, if someone comes up with a way to solve this, so we should keep exploring the question.

Trying to stay positive,

I am far too practical to be positive or negative , my outlook simply mirrors whatever assessment of the situation I make.

Finally, I think many people are missing one of Beths top priorities with Patches & DLC and that is consoles and M$.

While I agree communication would be beneficial, I feel that is a bit unfair given the support they choose to give to modders.

[X(S.a.R.a.H)X]

The QA process is the likely reason that patch 1.5 took so long to show up (patch goes through Bethesda QA, then goes to Microsoft QA, then goes back to Bethesda to make the changes Microsoft wants, then the process starts again).

A lotta good the QA did, huh? :shakehead:

[Roberta Obrien]

I'ma interject a response of my own here - - -

The trouble with this is that... the game runs fine with 1.5. You don't need fakepatch. However, 1.5 is breaking mods that do certain things, and those mods now cause a game crash. It's different from actually having no playability in the game itself.

In the case of a problem like this, sure. Their dev team could very easily be tied up with all sorts of [censored] relative to their deadline for the broken steel dlc. They don't have an infinite number of programmers standing about in the wings of their building, ready to tackle every weird thing at absolutely any time. They're a company that works over in Maryland, and stuff, and I bet they have like, desks, and a coffee machine, and yeah. Not like, magicians or fairies. And, not like tinkerbell.

heh, I kind of figured Beth woudld be organized more like Intel. (Groups focused on different things).

I imagine that the pc group dealing with the dlc are not the same people in charge of the patch. God, even thinking about this mess makes my head hurt.

Who the heck tested the 1.5 patch before releasing it into the wild? Its crazy that they didnt have a few esps loaded just to make sure the patch plays nice.

Who the heck tested broken steel before releasing it? I dont care if Microsoft screwed up. Of course they did, they are microsoft. They(Beth or microsoft) should have at least had a dry run with broken steel to make sure everything went right. (Easily done, upload file to live, try and download it, if it fails, get on the phone and yell at someone)

[IM NOT EASY]

Just for perspective, have you guys been to the XBox forums?....................................

[carly mcdonough]

heh, I kind of figured Beth woudld be organized more like Intel. (Groups focused on different things).

I imagine that the pc group dealing with the dlc are not the same people in charge of the patch. God, even thinking about this mess makes my head hurt.

Who the heck tested the 1.5 patch before releasing it into the wild? Its crazy that they didnt have a few esps loaded just to make sure the patch plays nice.

Who the heck tested broken steel before releasing it? I dont care if Microsoft screwed up. Of course they did, they are microsoft. They(Beth or microsoft) should have at least had a dry run with broken steel to make sure everything went right. (Easily done, upload file to live, try and download it, if it fails, get on the phone and yell at someone)

As Beth does not support the GECK they do not have to test the patch with mods. I however think it would be courtesy to your customers to do it anyway but we all know Beth has little care for them unlike Valve or Crytec. Heck Ubi might even be doing a better job...

[christelle047]

Alright, could anyone with a lot of affected mods try the following?

1. Get into the testQAitems location pre-patch 1.5.
2. Wait four days for a cell reset.
3. Then patch the game to 1.5.
4. Do another cell reset.
5. Get out and check whether mods are working now.


Just read that someone on a German board found out that this solves the problem...

[IsAiah AkA figgy]

The trouble with this is that... the game runs fine with 1.5.

Slight FYI which basically saying "we are not alone" with the 1.5 patch. That core customer base is getting hurt too.
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=986426.

I decided today to download the two latest expansions having been desperate to enjoy some new content in my favorite game only to be presented with the most horrific dilemma. I patched to 1.5 as required for Broken Steel and now LIVE is no longer available to me in game, so I have no access to the DLC that I have just paid for.

[remi lasisi]

Alright, could anyone with a lot of affected mods try the following?

1. Get into the testQAitems location with pre-patch 1.5.
2. Wait four days for a cell reset.
3. Patch the game.
4. Do another cell reset.
5. Get out and check whether mods are working now.


Just read that someone on a German board found out that this solves the problem...

Someone really should try this. I don't qualify to do it.

And yeah about the Xbox forums. It looks like the actual Broken Steel release is having some troubles. The dev people are, I expect, real busy right now, and aren't gonna be able to get back to our mod-related issues for a bit, even if they want to. They would kinda need to get that stuff working as a first priority, and it only makes sense.

[brian adkins]

1. Get into the testQAitems location with pre-patch 1.5.
2. Wait four days for a cell reset.
3. Patch the game.
4. Do another cell reset.
5. Get out and check whether mods are working now.

Didn't work here, waited 4 days in testcell coc'ed to modded wasteland cells (grayditch), then to megaton and back and the modifications had disappeared... then it crashed.

As an aside I'm having no problems with this mod list using 1.5;

Fallout3.esmHairPack.esmCALIBR.esmFWE_FO3_Wanderers_Edition.esmMart's Mutant Mod.esmThePitt.esmAnchorage.esmUnofficial Fallout 3 Patch.espUnofficial Fallout 3 Patch - The Pitt.espUnofficial Fallout 3 Patch - Operation Anchorage.espDarNifiedUIF3.espDUIF3Extras.espCASM.espracetest.espFWE_00_QUEST.espFWE_01_COMBAT.espFWE_02_COMBAT_II.espFWE_03_CHARACTER.espFWE_04_CHARACTER_II.espFWE_05_ITEMLOOT.espFWE_05_ITEMLOOT_II.espFWE_05_ITEMLOOT_III.espFWE_06_SPAWNS.espFWE_07_IMMERSION.espFWE_08_FEATURES.espBlackWolf Backpack.espMart's Mutant Mod.espMart's Mutant Mod - Natural Selection.espMart's Mutant Mod - Hunting & Looting.espMart's Mutant Mod - FWE.esp

[Multi Multi]

Didn't work here, waited 4 days in testcell coc'ed to modded wasteland cells (grayditch), then to megaton and back and the modifications had disappeared... then it crashed.

As an aside I'm having no problems with this mod list using 1.5;

Fallout3.esmHairPack.esmCALIBR.esmFWE_FO3_Wanderers_Edition.esmMart's Mutant Mod.esmThePitt.esmAnchorage.esmUnofficial Fallout 3 Patch.espUnofficial Fallout 3 Patch - The Pitt.espUnofficial Fallout 3 Patch - Operation Anchorage.espDarNifiedUIF3.espDUIF3Extras.espCASM.espracetest.espFWE_00_QUEST.espFWE_01_COMBAT.espFWE_02_COMBAT_II.espFWE_03_CHARACTER.espFWE_04_CHARACTER_II.espFWE_05_ITEMLOOT.espFWE_05_ITEMLOOT_II.espFWE_05_ITEMLOOT_III.espFWE_06_SPAWNS.espFWE_07_IMMERSION.espFWE_08_FEATURES.espBlackWolf Backpack.espMart's Mutant Mod.espMart's Mutant Mod - Natural Selection.espMart's Mutant Mod - Hunting & Looting.espMart's Mutant Mod - FWE.esp

No surprise there, I don't think any of those are adding items, they look to be mostly gameplay effects. What is really going to be impacted are mods that add quests/storylines, as many of those add new locations/NPC's/etc.

[Nuno Castro]

Didn't work here, waited 4 days in testcell coc'ed to modded wasteland cells (grayditch), then to megaton and back and the modifications had disappeared... then it crashed.

As an aside I'm having no problems with this mod list using 1.5;

And you did roll back to 1.4 or previous, load the save, wait for four days, all the stuff I mentioned?

[Steve Fallon]

And you did roll back to 1.4 or previous, load the save, wait for four days, all the stuff I mentioned?

That's an easy step to miss, isn't it, because it's kinda a pain in the ass.

[WTW]

That's an easy step to miss, isn't it, because it's kinda a pain in the ass.

but if it works, it's worth the pain.