Introduction[]
This short guide will show you how to patch your German and UK 
CRITTER.DAT to a US version one; and it explains why it's important to do so.
The problem is caused by the fact that Interplay removed all "bloody" animations and all children from the localized version of Fallout I and II. They didn't only change a flag in the .exe which makes it impossible to turn the violence-meter above 3; they also deleted all the graphics from the .dat archives to ensure that nobody changes the .exe file with a hex editor to set the violation-meter back to the US version.
The FIFE team created these patches so the users of localized versions can convert their CRITTER.DAT into the US version. This way all the missing animations and the children are now available and can be accessed by FIFE.
MD5 hashes[]
Here are the MD5 hashes of different versions the Fallout DAT files listed.
Fallout 1 US[]
- critter.dat: 767E37C1D1DA2167C704C3991E251947
- master.dat: A77331BC7B66AD04DF81D76874CEA9D7
Fallout 1 GER[]
- critter.dat: 479427F5CBC55B233688C607D18DAD16
- master.dat: 72847815DAEE788CAC9AD61E6A691113
Fallout 1 UK (GSP White Label)[]
- critter.dat: 9ac5274bf96f1a37e5a0a0178f4a5719
- master.dat: e88668df95f6
The UK version is missing children, but has full gore assets.
Fallout 2 US[]
- critter.dat: 9b16e92ac88d168e81126b72e6f9ab3c
- master.dat: f20539c899e702848d0f70b0a2d94181
Fallout 2 GER[]
- critter.dat: C757310312A3A71E3850A9F4B3CB6163
- master.dat: B113637fAAFF630F956E0B86B104E45E
Fallout 2 UK (GSP White Label)[]
- critter.dat: 9b16e92ac88d168e81126b72e6f9ab3c (same as US)
- master.dat: b1d16ac9345694aaf28426ee2b5cb304
Installation instructions[]
The patches are available in the Download section. Get the right package, depending on Fallout version (1 or 2) and the language (UK or GER).
Mac and Linux users will need to install xdelta. The command lines shown below will only work for the (rather old) version of xdelta provided there, as newer version have at least changed the syntax. The Win32 patch comes with a bundled xdelta executable, so you don't need to download anything but the patch.
Win32[]
Platform-dependent information: Win32.
The following passage contains information that is specific to Windows operating systems.
- Make sure you do a full install of Fallout.
- Extract the downloaded package to your
<Fallout> directory. - Run the extracted batch file, e.g.: fo2_ger_us.bat
- The CRITTER.DAT gets patched now, the original file gets renamed to CRITTER.OLD.
- Delete the CRITTER.OLD after testing that everything works as planned.
Mac[]
Platform-dependent information: Mac.
The following passage contains information that is specific to PPC and Intel-x86-based Macintosh systems.
- Create a new folder on your desktop: patch
- Copy the CRITTER.DAT from your Fallout CD into the patch folder
- Rename the CRITTER.DAT to CRITTER.OLD
- Patch the CRITTER.OLD with: xdelta patch fo$fallout_$language_us.patch CRITTER.OLD CRITTER.DAT
- Here is an example for the UK version of Fallout 1: xdelta patch fo1_uk_us.patch CRITTER.OLD CRITTER.DAT
- Copy the patched CRITTER.DAT from the patch folder into your <Fallout> directory. Overwrite the existing CRITTER.DAT.
Linux[]
Platform-dependent information: Linux.
The following passage contains information that is specific to Linux and other POSIX-based operating systems.
- Create a new folder on your desktop: patch
- Copy the CRITTER.DAT from your Fallout CD into the patch folder
- Rename the CRITTER.DAT to CRITTER.OLD
- Patch the CRITTER.OLD with: xdelta patch fo$fallout_$language_us.patch CRITTER.OLD CRITTER.DAT
- Here is an example for the UK version of Fallout 1: xdelta patch fo1_uk_us.patch CRITTER.OLD CRITTER.DAT
- Copy the patched CRITTER.DAT from the patch folder into your <Fallout> directory. Overwrite the existing CRITTER.DAT.