Vault 696, The Minimal Shelter Project


The Minimal Shelter Project is vault file I'm running on my iOS7 iPad2. Its objective is to slowly push at the limits of various "issues" that FalloutShelter has (or until Bethesad actually fixes them).


The Minimal Shelter is adding no more than 3 (connected) resource generation rooms of a type (Power, Water, Food, Stims, RadAway). This is to cut down on Room Animations Vault. All needs of the vault must be met by room Upgrades and high related SPECIALs of workers in the room (when available).


Dwellers are being slow added (or breed) to meet room requirements. No more than one child is to be born at a time (to prevent overlapping Birth notice pop-ups). Dwellers will be favored for high SPECIALs in resource rooms. Dwellers without a place in the Vault will be sent "exploring".


Tertiary support rooms (storage, radio, SPECIAL training) will be limited to a single room (with upgrades), if the vault remains operable to those points.


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Bethesda has declared A5 (iPad2, iPad2Mini, iPhone4S, iPodTouch5) devices as "unsupported" due to technical limits of the devices. I find this laughable for what is little more than a Hotel game (examples abound in the AppStore). It is more a case of Bethesda overreaching as usual and expecting user end hardware to carry poor optimization.


There three key areas where Fallout Shelter has notable performance issues that could be trimmed back.


1) 2D Menu Animations. This covers everyting from actual menus, to room resource collection animations, to rush completion, to baby birth name screens. The fact that I can crash FalloutShelter by just opening and paging through the Help screens speaks volumes to me about problems within this area.


2) 3D Rooms. They look lovely, but rendering them in real time is a major resource hog, especially all the little animations in them. This included things like rats in empty rooms. On more power iOS device hardware that's all well and good. But for weaker hardware these need to be scaled back or even flattened to static images.


3) Dweller animations. I don't think this as major an issue as the first two, however that is what the Minimalist project aims to discover. So far having characters running around in panic during events has been failry stable even on my more massive Vault (which is suspend for the time being). Although, like the 3D rooms, flattening the characers to no or very limited set 2D set poses would be antoher area of reduced resource use.


There already exists this flattening for issues 2 and 3. If you zoom out fully you get the flat animations. If those were put in place at closer zoomes as toggleable options, that would likey to a long way to getting this running on weaker hardware. Not having to load or animate the 3D rooms and fairly active character animations should help on "loading" complex vaults as well.


A toggle for "Flat Rooms". And a separate a toggle for "Flat Dwellers".


As always more Options over display control = better. I'd also like to see a low resolution option for non-retina devices for the 2D Art Assets, no reason to load more pixels than the screen can handle. Bethesda already has the high resolution images so down scaling them shouldn't be an issue. The difficult part will be adding in hardware check for A5 devices to use them... OR just make it another toggleable option in the Settings and let the Users figure it out. (Seriously did no one on the design team for this think of any of the above? Or was this just rushed out the door for E3? It's okay to say so, just start making good on polishing it now.)

Excellent post. Since I can no longer access my original vault, I started a new "minimalist" vault like you described. I believe the overlapping baby announcements are what locked me out.

Looks like I'm now locked out of my minimalist vault as well. Damn this game. SMH

Day 1 Late:

The Vault has Expanded to meet near full production requirements. Power drain is becoming a concern for future expansion.

Day 2 Mid:

It was decided to reduce (to 1 room) RadAway production and storage in favor of power savings. As long as the Water Treatment Plant can be kept in production, there is low danger of massive radiation exposure to Dwellers. The Cafeteria may also be scaled back as production remains strong with only two Dwellers operating. StimPack production in the MedBay is considered a "critical" need at this time, to keep a supply stock for Radroach incidents, and Wasteland Raider attacks.

RadAway production can be "Rushed" to supply Explorers, if needed.

Dweller uptake remains slow and deliberate (19 at current count, with 1 unborn). Selective been has been unsuccessful to date.

Dwellers "Paul Jackson" and "Donna Hawkins" have been very "brave" in repeatedly "exploring" the Wasteland. Finding may useful guns and outfits. The Power Plant has seen increased efficiency with their contribution of strength enhancing "Combat Suits".

One thing to try if you haven't is to do a full reboot of your iPad. Power fully off. This clears the RAM of any extra process and junk left over from crashes. I've had to do this every so often just because this program is so badly optimized (I doubt it is actually "optimized" on the more modern devices, just taking advantage of them being more powerful to push through the cruff). Blizzard used to demand this with Hearthstone until "we" (iPad 2 users) shouted them down by pointing out how their non-optimized animations and art assets were dragging down a program that had no business being such a resource hog. Even after full reboots I've still just pushed through repeated relaunches until it goes. IMO it remains the 2D animations (resource collection) that remain the top breakers, especially on relaunch when multiple rooms or baby births require collection and have "bouncing" iconography.

Yeah I've tried the full reboot. No luck. I don't know what the problem could be this time. I'm only at 12 rooms and 27 dwellers.

Day 4: 24 Dwellers, 9 Rooms


If it had not been for Confessor Cromwell taking charge of the Power Plant all may have been lost as power production had continued to futher and further behind. High SPECIALs in rooms are very important. Even with reductions in the Cafeteria and Science Lab. The Cafeteria has been expanded again as it was also having problems keeping up with demand, especially after Raids.


Raido and Weight rooms have been constructed. Current Vault layout: Room (Upgrade state, connected rooms)


Vault Door (Max) — Barracks (Max, 2) — Water Treatment Plant (Max, 3)

Power Plant (Max, 3) — Medical Bay (Max, 3) — Storage (Max, 1) — Radio Station (Basic, 1)

Science Lab (Max, 1) — Cafeteria (Max, 3) — Weight Room (Advanced, 1)


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I've set "Cam Sen" in the this Vaults settings to 0%. I have no idea what this option contorts so I'm going to out it to 0. I THINK it controls how fast the camera zooms on Incident, as it seems to have stopped zooming to them. Which should help... maybe.


Slowly approaching what seems to be the 27th-28th Dweller issue. It makes me wonder how Bethesda actually set up Dwellers as a data type structure. If they did so in a manner that breaks the compatibility of memory assigment in the A5 based devices. Which would (again) be something I find face palm worthy in a MOBILE HOTEL game of resource collection.

I decided to give up on the iPad and load the game on my phone. So far it has been flawless. I'm pissed that I lost some great dwellers (Three Dog, Moira Brown, Star Paladin Cross) but life goes on. My current vault is 12 rooms with 30 dwellers. Resources are at max. Currently working on increasing SPECIAL ratings to boost my resource dwellers.

Day 5: 26 Dwellers and going strong. Still need frequent full reboots


Day 6: Backed up the .sav file for this vault and am going for a 27th dweller by birth. Was holding out for one by Lunchbox draw or by external with radio room, but haven't picked up one. We will se of this makes or breaks the vault.

This is sort of parallax effect. I set this 0% but still getting event zooms.

Even on A7 device, game is slowing down as i reached 50+ dwellers.

And the 27th Dweller is the kiss of death to A5 iPad 2s.