Karma_Police: I wonder what the differences between the dos and windows versions are?
TMWNN: The DOS version apparently
does not have audio for much of the text in the game.
Also, can you install mods?
TMWNN: No.
Most mods depend on DirectX.
insanitysnake: Maybe its just me but I've noticed slowdown when loading the menus. Is anyone else having this problem?
TMWNN: Fallout is among the last DOS games ever made, and among the very, very, very few to have more or less equal versions for DOS and Windows. (
The Last Express, which appeared the same year, is another such example; I wouldn't be surprised to see Boxer-based Mac support from GOG in time.) 1997 was, as you can see, a transition year for the PC games industry from DOS to Windows.
What this means is that Fallout requires more CPU horsepower for Boxer/DOSbox to emulate than a game from 1985 or 1992, thus the slow menus.
Is the CPU actually a cause of bottleneck for the transition screens? I didn't get the sense that my computer was using a lot of horsepower. More than what the original game would have required, for sure, but nothing to give my fans a workout. In fact, I used activity monitor to watch CPU usage and it actually halved while in transition compared to when I just let the game sit on a menu.