Here are some notes on what I did to install Fallout 3 (Game of the year edition) on Ubuntu Lucid using Wine.

Prerequisites

Basic Installation

  • follow the WineHQ instructions

  • after installing both DVDs, apply the patch

  • set the appropriate performance settings for your hardware (make sure you use the same resolution as the one you use in Xorg)

  • click on "Data Files" and enable all of the Fallout 3 add-ons you have installed

Performance Tweaks

Change these settings in your ~/My Games/Fallout 3/FALLOUT.INI:

bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1  
bUseThreadedBlood=1  
bUseThreadedMorpher=1  
bUseThreadedAI=1  
iNumHWThreads=2  
iNumHavokThreads=5  
bDoSpecularPass=0  
bUseRefractionShader=0  
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1

Then create a direct3d.reg file (replacing 512 with the correct amount of video memory you have, in MB):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00  
  
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Wine\Direct3D]  
"OffscreenRenderingMode"="backbuffer"  
"VideoMemorySize"="512"  
  
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]  
"FontSmoothing"="2"  
"FontSmoothingType"=dword:00000002  
"FontSmoothingGamma"=dword:00000578  
"FontSmoothingOrientation"=dword:00000001

and import these settings (which come from the Wine wiki and its appdb) into the registry:

regedit file.reg

Savegame corruption

At some point, I did run into savegame corruption (mostly due to my hard disk filling up) and I created this cronjob in /etc/cron.hourly/fallout3-savegames to detect corrupt savegame:

#!/bin/sh  
find /path/to/Fallout3/Savegames/ -type f -name "*.tmp" -print

Installing mods

If you want to install user-contributed mods (for example, if you can't be bothered with the lockpicking and terminal hacking mini-games), you will most likely want to install FOMM.

To do that, follow these instructions to install dotnet20 and gdiplus using winetricks otherwise you may run into this bug.

Finally, pay attention to the order in which your selected mods are loaded since some of the mods will overwrite files provided by another.

Hints and tips

There is an incredibly dedicated community maintaining a wiki for this game as well as all of the other "chapters" of the Fallout series. Use it wisely!