How to get the Fallout 1 (and Fallout 2) high-resolution patch working for Mac OS X

fallout-1-high-res-patch-mac-osx.md

Fallout 1 (and Fallout 2) Hi-Res Patch for Mac OS X

Fallout 1 was originally designed to run at 640x480 resolution. I wanted to run the Mac OS X version of Fallout on my MacBook 11", which has a 1366x768 display. There is a high resolution patch, but it only supports the Windows version of Fallout.

Turns out that the OS X version of Fallout runs through Wine, so we can get this patch working with just a few configuration changes:

Note for Fallout 2 users: The process for Fallout 2 is essentially the same, with a different patch, and some minor pathing differences. Other than that, the process is exactly the same!

Install Wine

1. Install Homebrew, a package manager for OS X
2. Open a terminal and install Wine with brew install wine

Note: Installing Wine will take some time. You may move on to "Configure Fallout's Wine Launcher" while Wine is installing, but wait until the Wine installation is complete before attempting "Configure and Patch".

Configure Fallout's Wine

1. Right click on /Applications/Fallout/, and choose "Show Package Contents" to browse Fallout's files
2. Run the Wineskin utility, and click "Screen Options"
3. Change the "Resolution" option to "Current Resolution" (Or the resolution you plan on running Fallout at. You may need to revisit this step when selecting the patch's resolution.)
4. Click "Done" to go back to the main Wineskin menu
5. Click on "Advanced", and then the "Winetricks" button under "Utilities"
6. Under the "dlls" list, put a check next to "d3dx9", and click the "Run" button, then "Run" again to confirm

Install the High Res Patch

1. Download and extract the Fallout 1 High Resolution Patch
2. Extract "Fallout1_High_Resolution_Patch_v4.1.8.exe"
3. Copy all files except the "data" directory to Applications/Fallout/Contents/Resources/drive_c/GOG Games/Fallout (Note:, this path is for the GOG version of Fallout. This path may differ slightly depending on the version of Fallout you have.)
4. Merge the "data" directory into Applications/Fallout/Contents/Resources/drive_c/GOG Games/Fallout/data/ (Do not overwrite the data directoy. We need to keep the original files around.)
5. (Optional) Create a backup copy of Applications/Fallout/Contents/Resources/drive_c/GOG Games/Fallout/falloutw.exe

Configure and Patch

Note: Make sure Wine is installed before performing these steps.

1. Open a terminal and navigate to Applications/Fallout/Contents/Resources/drive_c/GOG Games/Fallout/
2. Run wine f1_res_Config.exe
3. Make sure "Windowed" is unchecked
4. Select the resolution matching Fallout's Wine configuration (see "Configure Fallout's Wine", step 3)
5. Click the "Enable" button to enable the Hi-Res patch
6. Click "Done"

Run Fallout

That's it! You should now be able to run Fallout in a higher resolution. You may need to tweak the patch configuration and Fallout's Wine to get it working.

Troubleshooting

"Error initializing video mode"

If you get a Windows-style error message that says "Error initializing video mode", it means that Fallout's Wine and the patch are not configured to the same resolution. They must match to work.

Inverted/Distorted Colors

If the game runs but the colors are inverted/distorted, it means the "d3dx9" DLL is not installed in Fallout's Wine. See "Configure Fallout's Wine", step 6.

Hi! I tried this method and worked all day long because this is a completely new thing for me. I mean using the terminal etc.

Anyways, I got so far as running the config.exe and tweaking the resolution but it keeps saying "The Fallout Executable Could Not Be Found!" and the enable button is gray and cannot be clicked.

I have searched for answers on the internet and the same problem has popped up for others also but i haven't seen a confirmed solution for this. One theory was that the falloutw.exe could be case sensitive in some way. i have tried changing the letters to big and small and everything possible. The problem still exists. Have you stumbled upon this problem? I hope there is a solution for this. :) I hope you understand my writing. English is not my native language. Thanks!

Thanks man, works for me

@TheCeeMon you must run the app from the directory containing the file, so:

1. cd /Applications/Fallout.app/Contents/Resources/drive_c/GOG\ Games/Fallout/
2. wine f1_res_Config.exe

Thank you so much for writing out this tutorial!

I initially got stuck on the "configure and patch" section. The steps are a little unclear for those not familiar with using the terminal.

There is a simple alternative I found, that you can simply drag and drop the .exe file onto the wineskin wrapper and it will execute the file. Info is from the wineskin manual here: http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-index.php?page=Manual+4.1+The+Installer

That let me finish configuring the patch and now it runs perfectly! Thanks again.

Note for others - if you can't find Winetricks app or drive_c folder, try: /Applications/Fallout.app/Contents/Resources/game/Fallout.app/ instead.

I followed all the steps in this guide and I'm still getting the error initialising video mode message on start-up. Any idea what the problem may be? Wine and patch are configured to the same resolution. The only thing that differs is the color depth but I don't think that could be causing it. Would really appreciate any advice.

I just tried Fallout 2 to no avail, same problem as before. I'm using a 2014 Macbook Pro retina. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks! This almost worked perfectly. The only thing is that Wine seems to emulate a desktop despite having that disabled, and Fallout 2 runs in a 640 window (despite config'd to be non-windowed) that can be resized.

Problem solved:

1. Using homebrew's Wine from terminal to run the config utility creates a second drive_c in ~/.wine so if the hi-res patch uses "UAC awareness", which it seems to do by default, it will not store or use the f2_res.ini in Program Files (if I understood the description of UAC_AWARE correctly), but in ~/.wine/drive_c/users/<user>/Application Data/Fallout2. The config utility needs to be launched through Wineskin to use the .ini that you copied into in Program Files/Fallout 2.

For some reason this does not create a third config file in Wineskin's drive_c even if UAC_AWARE=1, which is a bit confusing. Maybe I misunderstood that option.

2. To make fullscreen work correctly I had to activate Set Screen Options → Override Settings → Rootless (windowed), as unintuitive as that was.

3. Winetricks did not seem to be necessary. At least it seems to work after I undo (I think?) it by deleting all entries in Config Utility → Libraries → Existing Overrides. Maybe it did something more than that.

macOS mojave
wine engine 2.22