I have recently purchased Fallout2, but changing the violence_level does not work. I am always getting the most violent animations possible, as if I had selected the trait 'bloody mess' (which I haven't). I've discovered that when you change the setting in the
preferences screen, the file fallout2.cfg is changed so that the line
violence_level=<some number> reflects what you selected .... 0 for no violence and
3 for 'maximum blood'. But the game is not listening to this variable, and runs things
always at maximum blood. Its like getting the bloody mess trait for free -- which I
suppose some people would like, but not being one of them, I wondered if you have
a way to restore the ability to select the violence level?
Thanks very much for all the work. I am having a ton of fun with this, so I don't
want you to think that I am an unhappy customer. I'm happy, but thought I would ask...
Thank you.

If you're using Windows 7 or Vista, it might worth a try to move the Fallout folder out of Program Files. The user account control in those operating systems tend to virtualize anything under there, which can lead to strange things if you are modifying files using different programs.
As you can't even set it in game, chances are it's not what the problem is, but it worth a try. I usually put games in D:\Games on my secondary partition to make sure Windows never touches the files.
The Fallout folder can be freely moved around without changing the registry, as long as you change the folder in the ini file as well to point to the right place.

I'm using windows XP here. The problem is the same whether I use my C:\Program Files
version or a copy that is on a memory stick. I only have one hd partition, so I cannot test
things by using a different on-disk partition. There are only 2 .ini files, ddraw.ini and
unins000.ini and neither have a filename path in them.
However, I have found some of my problem. I've been trying to set the violence level
as the first thing I do when loading the program, under 'options' before proceeding to
'load game'. Then when I load the game, the violence level is reset to whatever that
game had as its setting.
As a result, I have mispoke above, By changing things after I load a game, I now find
that I have two effective violence levels in the game -- 'None' and 'Bloody Mess'.
But the 'normal' and 'minimal' settings still aren't working -- no matter how gently
i kill things, I still end up with maximum blood.
But it looks as if this is some peculiarity of my system -- at least others are not speaking up and saying they have this as well. I will have to find some other computer that runs windows somewhere and see if my download works properly there.
Thank you for the suggestion.