Forum:A bit of this, a bit of that...

To the moon:

June 20th, 1969. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for man kind". Neil Armstrong was the first human to ever set foot on the moon.

That was a highly technical Apollo 11 mission with the help of an onboard computer that could hold a whooping 64 kilobytes of memory!

Now bare with me please, the next section is not flattering, but the one after that makes up for it.

Wrong engine:

Decades later, video game designers struggle to develop products for computers and consoles holding gigabytes of memory and extremely powerful video cards and processors.

Some companies keep building their games on old, deprecated game engines that were designed with poor memory management features. As a result, programmers cannot implement aggressive memory management with those engines, like the scientists did with the Apollo missions.

In the case of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, that gross oversight translate to irate players cursing because they have to constantly reboot their machines as frame rates drop constantly to a crawl or a complete (memory leak) stop. When these games and their DLCs come out, we feel like beta testers as oppose to consumers.

When can we expect, in the Fallout series, an engine that can handle aggressive memory management?

Now, the good part. Quick suggestions for the next game (and one for Fallout: New Vegas):

I remember watching Neil Armstrong step out on the moon and desperately wanting to be him. I suspect that in the fifties, as space travel became a real possibility (Sputnik 1, october 4th, 1957), people wanted to be astronauts as well. There must have imagined lunar large scale development.

Wouldn't it be great if the next Fallout, the playable character could travel to a place never ravaged by nuclear war or the passage of time: a huge base on the moon! It could be humorous, like in Big MT!

A way to carry the songs from fallout 3 and new Vegas, to the new game. For instance, "Let's go sunning" was a catchy tune! (include them in the next game, they could be awesome unlockables).

No changing the rules with DLCs: I spent all my ammos in Old World Blues (I played very hard over weeks to earn those in the Mohave wasteland). Enemies were everywhere and way too involved! Tough for a casual player (even at level 40!) I replayed it entirely to save my ammos, and used a blunt instrument instead. That wasn't my best choice of play.

A way to make high quality (1920 x 1080 pixels) screenshots via the use of the in-game Codac R9000 camera (for consoles like the PS3). After all, putting those tempting cameras in the game makes this feature 'long overdue'.

As for Fallout: New Vegas - provided that both Veronica Santangelo and Christine Royce are alive and fulfilled at the end of the game - it would have been a fitting end for the courier to find that the two finally get reunited at the Sierra Madre and got into doing something constructive there. It would have been fantastic to add a little love to a world that is so harsh. After all, Veronica mention that she still thinks about her from time to time. A 'humanitarian' (good karma) courier could have been presented with the proper dialogues and given a chance to participate in this. Just an idea - that could be added in the next DLC!

Question:

Who's the vintage heart breaker that sang the song "Let's go sunning" in Fallout 3 please? Nobody seems to know.

Thanks for reading.

I can take care of that robot problem for you... just sayin' !