It's been years, I've been busy, but I've been squeezing modding into my schedule wherever I can and this mod is well overdue for a proper update.
Here are some things to expect in the future:
Renaming the project to the Fable Community Patch
A split between the current bsdiff installer version and optional FMPs for increased flexibility and compatibility
bsdiff will likely be an off-site requirement if you use that version
Removing the introduced 4 augmentation limit on the Frying Pan, setting the limit back to the vanilla 5, and re-approaching the issue as a UI bug
Fix Lightning 4 timing inconsistency
Fix Graveyard Demon Door being killable under certain circumstances
Fix Assassin Rush on Greatwood Gorge bridge
Unhide seagull
Fix "wife" text in English version when attempting to go to bed with your husband
Make ranged zoom keys remappable as a workaround for bracket crash with some keymaps during Guild archery training tutorial
Light version for the Xbox release of TLC (2004 Fable will not be supported)
Finally, the Fable Anniversary Community Patch
"Fable Community Patch" was the original name for this project as it started back in 2019. The idea was that it would be a community effort, and as such I want to thank everyone who has provided feedack and bug reports, helping shape this project as it goes forward. I also want to distance myself from similar "unofficial patch" projects from other games, which have gained a certain reputation for being not in the best interests of the community.
Please understand that I can not fix every bug that everyone experiences. As time goes on, Fable TLC has expressed increasingly erratic behaviour on modern setups with modern operating systems, hardware, and device drivers. In a way, every copy of Fable is personalised. This project is primarily aimed at issues that can be fixed by editing data files (mostly game definitions and level scripts), and will not be touching the executable (things that are hard-coded).
It's possible that not everything listed above will be in the next update. I want to prioritise getting the Frying Pan, Demon Door, and Lightning fixes out as soon as possible, and the rest can come later. Once everything is in a more settled state, I'll release the Fable Anniversary Community Patch and the XTLC Community Patch. To be perfectly candid, modding Fable Anniversary is a pain and I want to avoid having to update it frequently, so I'm only releasing that once I'm "caught up" with the expected changes.
Another bug I noticed, if one changes the default keybinds, during the archery tutorial the game will crash, game also crashes with non default keybinds for sneaking in bowerstone south.
Keybinds left default,game does not crash during archery tutorial or bowerstone south sneaking.
Changing the keybinds had no other issues than those 2 places.
I usually type with Dvorak and can confirm that [ and ] do crash the game during the archery tutorial. While messing around a few years back, I found a way to add an option to remap those keys so that the zoom keys can be mapped away from [ and ], but to the extent of my capabilities, the crash itself seems unavoidable with the bracket keys mapped to something that comes up in a tutorial as it is an issue with the exe itself as far as I can tell. If this is a desired workaround, I can see if the community is open to me adding that as a feature for the next update, but I try not to overreach too much with this mod.
The sneaking thing is interesting to me, because I've heard of the sneaking crash before, but haven't been able to diagnose it, and I've even heard of it happening with a default keymap. Can I ask what sneak was bound to when it crashed?
Had it set to Z and tried again with the left CTRL key. Tried a variety of sneaking keybinds. Any non default key crashed for me. This was without any mods at all.
I usually finish the tutorial then remap keys. I was baffled why it crashed in bowerstone south as well, then I realized yep was the key change. I sneak just fine in bower south on default keybinds. Ran into no other crash issues gameplay wise in general, def keybinds or non default.
Only needed sneaking for grabbing the haircut cards, with mods that let you buy em all, avoiding sneaking there isn't a great loss.
"Please tell me if the Demon Door at the Abandoned Road will open with this patch instaled, if you wear a Dark Will User's Outfit without the Dark Wizard Hat? (If you have a way to check it to 100% confirm it, that would be great.)"
A user down below asked if the demon door near twinblades camp worked, with the dark hat added to outfit. I tested it out and the outfit with the hat or without didn't matter, Door worked fine.
I only ran into the knothole glade issue of the demon door and archery doing no damage to the door. Cause I didn't do the patch update. With the new update, the door opened fine. Haven't run into any issue with the patch or using mods in general so far.
One is easily fixable, the other is not. It will be optional in the next update since there seems to be disagreement on how it should be fixed.
Edit: I'm just gonna make a quick FMP to revert the change as soon as I can, since the next UFP update is a big structural change and it's taking me forever to get mods out the past few years. I firmly believe in fixing things in the most vanilla-friendly way possible, even if that means leaving things unfixed, and I haven't resisted rolling back changes in the past. Since this is so controversial, I have no problem removing it. I just can't fix the UI bug, so you will still have to apply all 5 augments at once like in vanilla.
I am so glad to see someone actually try to tackle the inventory problem for weapons and stuff in the game. It always annoyed me when modding it lol. I tried making a sort of banking system, but that's practically a bandage compared to this.
I believe we talked on Discord, but I'll post here just in case anyone else is wondering.
I'm not currently aware of any way to fix random crashes with the base game. Crashes aren't generally a trivial thing that can just be "fixed" unless exactly what causes them is determined and is realistically fixable. Unfortunately, Fable is generally very particular about the underlying system in ways that problems that often occur on one setup under certain conditions may be impossible to duplicate on another setup, and the actual cause is never determined (for example, the "ghost town Oakvale" glitch found by Budget, among many other things).
For documentation's sake, it sounds like your crashes were occurring most frequently during the Orchard Farm quest and only happened when the camera was moved; you were using a mouse and on Windows 11, playing in fullscreen with maxed graphical settings at 1920x1080 on a fully vanilla French copy of the game. Compatibility mode and disabling in-game overlay in Steam still resulted in crashes. While I can't provide any sort of solution right now, I do want to have this all down just in case someone else has a similar issue so that we can maybe determine the cause through further diagnosis. For what it's worth, this is not a sort of crash that I have personally experienced on any setups, across multiple hardware configurations and operating systems, although I have yet to use Windows 11 with Fable.
Everything fixed is listed in the description, and there's been no work an audio. As far as I'm aware, that sounds like a system/setup issue. Fable TLC does support spacial audio, but I believe only Anniversary got proper surround sound support.
Please tell me if the Demon Door at the Abandoned Road will open with this patch instaled, if you wear a Dark Will User's Outfit without the Dark Wizard Hat? (If you have a way to check it to 100% confirm it, that would be great.)
Because that door requies the full Dark Will Set, and this patch is said to include the Dark Wizard Hat into the set.
I was about to play the game and was worried if I can get the door open, if I choose to get a Bright Wizard Hat during the Book Collection quest.
I don't believe so. Suits are basically just templates and nothing really reads them to my understanding. To be honest, I haven't tested this specifically, and I don't know when I'll have the time to do so, but I'll report back any findings.
Well, yes, if the door only checks for the four specific parts of the suit and doesn't check for the actual "pointer to the suit"/template of the suit, then it should be no issue.
Eventually would be great to verify it, as this patch got an update when some other bug was found with a demon door not possible to open (compared to unmodified game) under normal circumstances. It's a similar case.
The entire point of the Frying Pan is that is has the extra enhancement slot... You broke something that wasn't a bug. Any chance of a version without your Frying Pan "Fix"?
The UI only shows 4 slots, and you can only give it 5 augmentations if you do so all at once. You can't give it 5 if you go out of the menu and back in. This is a bug. Believe me, I try to avoid opinionated changes.
That's fair. I know I'm patching out some things people like based on technicality. If there's enough demand, I can create an optional patch that undoes the Frying Pan change. Anyone else can also do it themselves. I don't want this to become Fable's dreaded, overreaching USSEP. But I am going to patch the bugs that I can fix, and the Frying Pan technically is bugged as the menu is hardcoded to check if there are 4 augments when opened to determine if another augmentation can be used, and the UI can only show 4. So 5 augmentation slots is nothing but an oversight.
It's officially approved for frying pan to have 5 augment slots. It was "fixed" at first in Fable Anniversary, but they changed it back with another patch. It's supposed to be like that: https://web.archive.org/web/20151105031614/http://forum.lionhead.com/yaf_postsm38151_Fable-Anniversary-Patch-News.aspx
Below is a bullet point list of all the issues we have managed to address.
• Overall stability improvements • Fixed the teleport glitch with Thunder • Fixed the black screen bug just before the final boss fight • Fixed the autosave point after Nostro’s Soul quest • Scars will now appear on characters • Tattoos can be removed • Removed beetles from the summon spell • Frying Pan now has all 5 augment slots available
Interesting, so for Anniversary, it's a UI thing, not a slot thing. Thanks for the research, I even asked a dev and didn't get a conclusive answer. This still doesn't tell me how it was originally supposed to be and what direction the actual "fix" would be in, as it doesn't list this as a fix like it did with other bugs and removing beetles from Summon is definitely an Anniversary change (Anniv also made many other small tweaks that are unique to that release; fishing is a good example), but I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately the UI is quite a janky mess on the PC version (as someone intimately familiar with it, it's a nightmare), so I can't promise anything, but I'll include something pertaining to this in the next update, even if it's just reintroducing the hidden slot bug until I can figure something out. If this project grows much larger, I'll likely split it into different optional files so that people can just use what they like.
40 comments
Here are some things to expect in the future:
"Fable Community Patch" was the original name for this project as it started back in 2019. The idea was that it would be a community effort, and as such I want to thank everyone who has provided feedack and bug reports, helping shape this project as it goes forward. I also want to distance myself from similar "unofficial patch" projects from other games, which have gained a certain reputation for being not in the best interests of the community.
Please understand that I can not fix every bug that everyone experiences. As time goes on, Fable TLC has expressed increasingly erratic behaviour on modern setups with modern operating systems, hardware, and device drivers. In a way, every copy of Fable is personalised. This project is primarily aimed at issues that can be fixed by editing data files (mostly game definitions and level scripts), and will not be touching the executable (things that are hard-coded).
It's possible that not everything listed above will be in the next update. I want to prioritise getting the Frying Pan, Demon Door, and Lightning fixes out as soon as possible, and the rest can come later. Once everything is in a more settled state, I'll release the Fable Anniversary Community Patch and the XTLC Community Patch. To be perfectly candid, modding Fable Anniversary is a pain and I want to avoid having to update it frequently, so I'm only releasing that once I'm "caught up" with the expected changes.
The bowerstone south shopkeeper is always Derek, rarely sometimes he ends up as Maya or Daphne. The school teacher ended up as a random lady name.
Seems like they meant it only for the innkeeper or barmaids. Only other small quirk I noticed.
Keybinds left default,game does not crash during archery tutorial or bowerstone south sneaking.
Changing the keybinds had no other issues than those 2 places.
The sneaking thing is interesting to me, because I've heard of the sneaking crash before, but haven't been able to diagnose it, and I've even heard of it happening with a default keymap. Can I ask what sneak was bound to when it crashed?
This was without any mods at all.
I usually finish the tutorial then remap keys. I was baffled why it crashed in bowerstone south as well, then I realized yep was the key change. I sneak just fine in bower south on default keybinds. Ran into no other crash issues gameplay wise in general, def keybinds or non default.
Only needed sneaking for grabbing the haircut cards, with mods that let you buy em all, avoiding sneaking there isn't a great loss.
Dark Wizard Hat? (If you have a way to check it to 100% confirm it, that
would be great.)"
A user down below asked if the demon door near twinblades camp worked, with the dark hat added to outfit. I tested it out and the outfit with the hat or without didn't matter, Door worked fine.
I only ran into the knothole glade issue of the demon door and archery doing no damage to the door. Cause I didn't do the patch update. With the new update, the door opened fine.
Haven't run into any issue with the patch or using mods in general so far.
I think the UI not showing all the augment slots was the bug here, not the fact that it had 5 augment slots lmfao
Edit: I'm just gonna make a quick FMP to revert the change as soon as I can, since the next UFP update is a big structural change and it's taking me forever to get mods out the past few years. I firmly believe in fixing things in the most vanilla-friendly way possible, even if that means leaving things unfixed, and I haven't resisted rolling back changes in the past. Since this is so controversial, I have no problem removing it. I just can't fix the UI bug, so you will still have to apply all 5 augments at once like in vanilla.
I'm not currently aware of any way to fix random crashes with the base game. Crashes aren't generally a trivial thing that can just be "fixed" unless exactly what causes them is determined and is realistically fixable. Unfortunately, Fable is generally very particular about the underlying system in ways that problems that often occur on one setup under certain conditions may be impossible to duplicate on another setup, and the actual cause is never determined (for example, the "ghost town Oakvale" glitch found by Budget, among many other things).
For documentation's sake, it sounds like your crashes were occurring most frequently during the Orchard Farm quest and only happened when the camera was moved; you were using a mouse and on Windows 11, playing in fullscreen with maxed graphical settings at 1920x1080 on a fully vanilla French copy of the game. Compatibility mode and disabling in-game overlay in Steam still resulted in crashes. While I can't provide any sort of solution right now, I do want to have this all down just in case someone else has a similar issue so that we can maybe determine the cause through further diagnosis. For what it's worth, this is not a sort of crash that I have personally experienced on any setups, across multiple hardware configurations and operating systems, although I have yet to use Windows 11 with Fable.
Because that door requies the full Dark Will Set, and this patch is said to include the Dark Wizard Hat into the set.
I was about to play the game and was worried if I can get the door open, if I choose to get a Bright Wizard Hat during the Book Collection quest.
Well, yes, if the door only checks for the four specific parts of the suit and doesn't check for the actual "pointer to the suit"/template of the suit, then it should be no issue.
Eventually would be great to verify it, as this patch got an update when some other bug was found with a demon door not possible to open (compared to unmodified game) under normal circumstances. It's a similar case.
Welp, here is my contribution to the cause, lmao. That optional patch would be really appreciated. Thank you for your efforts anyway
https://web.archive.org/web/20151105031614/http://forum.lionhead.com/yaf_postsm38151_Fable-Anniversary-Patch-News.aspx