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Playing Fallout in a Window

Fallout

This article describes the process for playing Fallout and Fallout 2 in windowed mode (that is, not full screen) successfully on Windows 7. The modifications to both Fallout and Fallout 2 apply to the non-DRM versions available at GOG.

  • For Fallout 1, you will need to use D3DWindower. Unfortunately, the program and Geocities site (surprise!) are in Korean or Japanese, but a badly ported English version is available if you look hard enough. Extract the files and copy them directly into the Fallout installation directory.
  • For Fallout 2, use sfall.

Files

Because these files have been difficult to track down, I’ve mirrored them on my own site below (the MD5 hash is indicated in parentheses):

Fallout 1: DirectX Windower

Fallout running inside of a window.

For Fallout 1, it’s not entirely obvious how to get the DirectX Windower to function, so use the following steps:

  1. Open D3DWindower-English.exe. You can hover over a toolbar item to get its name.
  2. Click the Add Program toolbar item and add falloutw.exe.
  3. Click falloutw, then open the Settings toolbar.
  4. Set Height and Width to something appropriate, such as 1024 (H) and 768 (W) (the original game is 640x480). The English translation here is in error and the parameters are named in reverse.
  5. Enable Window Mode. Under Window Mode, uncheck DirectX 1-7 and check DirectX 8-9. Otherwise, the game will mysteriously crash.
  6. The remaining items can be left in their default state.
  7. Use the Run program icon to run the game.

Fallout 2: sfall

Fallout 2 running inside of a window.

Copy ddraw.ini and ddraw.dll in your Fallout 2 directory. Edit ddraw.ini as desired. Most of settings that need to be tweaked can be found under [Graphics].

Contrary to popular belief, the window can actually be moved from the top left of the screen by setting the WindowScrollKey property in ddraw.ini. Then, holding down the appropriate key and moving the mouse will move the window.

If you find newer versions of these files, please let me know and I’ll happily update this page.