The forum

I'm trying to get Fallout 3 to run on Ubuntu 10.10. I bought the game yesterday after checking appdb and seeing people had good results with it. I tried for hours to get this to work manually, before I heard about playonlinux. I eventually got it to run, but it was so buggy that it was unplayable: framerate was terrible, there was no sound(so I tunred on subtitles to see what was going on), and even then it seemed that it would get stuck and never update the scripted dialogs unless I flipped in and out of the menu a bunch of times. I couldn't get past the baby stage, where you are still setting up the character.

So I figured I'd give playonlinux a try and see if it could solve my problems. I installed steam again, via playonlinux this time, since it didn't recognize my existing install.
Here's where I'm not entirely clear on the order of steps to proceed. Should I have run steam from playonlinux and installed Fallout 3 in steam first, or run the playonlinux Fallout 3 install first, or does it matter. I don't understand how this works because Steam and Fallout 3 are each given their own wineprefix?
What I ended up trying was copying the Program Files/Steam/steamapps folder into the playonlinux steam folder(trying to avoid redownloading 9GB again over steam). I'm pretty sure all the game files go in this directory, but i don't know if maybe there are other files it it needs too.
And then I ran the playonlinux Fallout 3 insall with "migrate from steam" option. It seems to install without errors*, but when I go to run the game from playonlinux, nothing happens.

*The only message was not really an install failure but some kind of warning at the end of installation that this game has copy protection, and that wine won't run it. I own a legit copy of this game that I purchased through Steam. I don't understand this, because when I attempted my manual install outside of playonlinux, the game ran without any messages about copy protection, though it was still very buggy. I also don't understand this message because why would you have an install script for it if wine can't run it? Does this message only apply to the CD-based version of the game? The Steam version is all downloaded and no CD is involved.

Edited by peepsalot

Hi peepsalot.

I have the original Steam version of Fallout 3 GOTY and managed to get it working through Steam app installed using PlayOnLinux.

First I copied the whole Fallout 3 GOTY folder from my Steam's Windows version to the Steam's folder in PlayOnLinux.

All you need is to download this dll (link provided bellow), then copy it to [your user name]/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/Steam/drive_c/windows/system32.

After that, open you PlayOnLinux app, right click on Steam and choose "Configure Wine". Select the "Libraries" and type "msan1.dll" in the drop box. Hit "Add" and you're done.
Start Steam. I'm going now to set up properly my sound drivers to make it work properly with the game.

msna1.dll link:
http://www.dllbank.com/zip/m/msasn1.dll.zip

Good luck and let me know if it works for you too.

What if you don't have the Windoze version available to copy/paste? I am currently downloading Fallout 3 GOTY Edition through the Steam App on POL due to issues installing FO 3 GOTY through the POL's game link to FO 3 GOTY Steam install. I am hopeful, as it indicates 30 min download time.

I am attempting on Ubuntu 12.04 with an Nvidia Driver 319.32, AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor, reading 7.8 GB RAM Wine version 1.5.2

Annd the install went all the way through, including GFWL, launcher was playing sound, and disappeared. Suggestions?

Edited by Jenetik_Baqlash