EDIT: Original issue was the cinematic sequences were running so slow it made you think the game had frozen. It would literally take like an hour to do the Overseer's Briefing (and because it was so slow you wouldn't get much out of it anyway).

I did not find a solution, per se, but I did learn some things. 1) The Fallout Community Edition (link in a post below) fixes the issue. However, the issue appears to possibly related to screen resolution. When I encountered the problem I has set the game resolution to 1920X1080. Later, I ran the default game (not the Community Edition) with a lower resolution and the issue was gone. So, to recap, if you have this issue try reducing screen resolution (or perhaps scaling) OR get the Fallout Community Edition. Since the Fallout Community Edition includes some bug fixes, I'm going to go with that. YMMV

Tried playing Fallout today. Loaded and runs fine, but... when it's time to run a cinematic sequence (such as the beginning after character creation and get the Overseer's briefing) runs in sssssssssllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww motion. And when I say slow, I mean effing slow. It's like literally 1 frame per second, perhaps less than that actually. I tried it both in game and from the pip boy menu where you can play videos you've previously experienced.

FWIW, this is the original one (Classic I guess???) with the Interplay beginning and not the Bethesda version (It looks like I don't own that one... I guess when the change occurred previous owners of Fallout didn't get the Bethesda version for free??? Really??? WTF??)

But it's hard to actually describe just how slow it is. It's unplayable slow (unless you ESC out of all cinematic sequences) and I don't want to miss them because I have literally forgotten everything from this game. Should make for a good time again... but I can't play it like this.

Any help would be appreciated. Unless such help is "Well, buy the Bethesda version" because, well, Bethesda never gets another OFG dollar. And that shouldn't be the case anyway. I already own Fallout. Shouldn't have to buy it again to play it.

Thanks for any info.

Well....maybe we may get the DOS files supplied to us, if staff actually care about preservation.

That said, given the response already by staff. They will think about it....and a paragraph later, they tell us they flatly dont care, unless we use galaxy. They have a sense of humor(or no interest in customer desires).

On a semi-related note, Fallout has a source port:


https://github.com/alexbatalov/fallout1-ce/blob/main/README.md

https://github.com/alexbatalov/fallout1-ce/tags

I only have a vague answer to give.

Various old settings were tied to stuff such as CPU clock speed, forcefully using one CPU core or monitor refresh rate. Also, the cinematic videos were dependent on some codecs or libraries that are now likely incompatible with modern OS.

Whatever setting the movies in Fallout are tied to, finding and adjusting it through trial and error should offer a more reasonable experience.

Well, I downloaded the Fallout-ce file linked above, and fired it up and it played perfectly, including cinematic sequences. However, after that I went back and started it from the desktop icon again (thus starting the original classic version) and this time the Overseer's briefing played exactly right.

Is it possible that the screen resolution I had it set to was causing the issue? Is it possible that would affect those sequences playing? I think when I had the issue I had set the resolution to 1920 by 1080, but when I started it this time it came up in a smaller resolution and... it played correctly. Yesterday it was so slow I thought the thing had frozen. When you accept your character and start the game, the screen slowly fades to black and the Overseer's briefing starts. Yesterday, that fading to black took so long I at first thought it had frozen. But as I waited, the Overseer's Briefing did come up, but it was literally like 1 frame per second (or less) I mean it wasn't playable. Today all is good and it seems the only difference is resolution. Is that a possible culprit?

I may stick with community edition anyway since it says it had some bug fixes. (Didn't the HD patch that comes with it also have some bug fixes??? I thought that did as well. I'll have to change my desktop icon to point at the community edition executable since going into Windows Explorer and finding the Fallout-ce.exe file and double clicking that gets old lol. Assuming the gog release which includes the HD patch also included bug fixes, would it be safe to assume that the community edition has those included as well o not?

Also, a note for others, when attempting to run Fallout-ce.exe Windows Defender flags it as malware and won't start it. I checked the file at Virus Total and none of the several dozen security sweeps found anything malicious. I also went ahead and ran it anyway and I observed no problems. Just putting that out there in case others come and want to try that file, Windows Defender will flag it.

I think I'm gonna go ahead and use the community edition and see what's it like.

That kind of low framerate is almost always a consequence of having some sort of fps limiters/vsync/gsync enabled in your gpu control panel or some other application like RTSS. Try to disable all of them.

Resolution has no tangible effect on framerate, although the renderer used can have an effect since not all fps limiters can hook all contexts.

If you're on x64 Windows/Linux I'd just use normal Fallout. Community Edition only if you're on some other platform.