Posts by Furyo

  • Crysis 2

    It definitely was a technical decision. In other words, Crytek preferred to use the available coders to work on other things far more important to the overall quality of the game.

  • Crysis 2

    Quote from Gloglebag

    And if I remember correctly the first sold very well and it's the money from PC gamers allowed crytek to expand and fund their endeavour on the consoles.

    No it's not. Far from it. EA's money allowed Crytek to expand and fund their endeavour on the consoles. If you think making the most pirated PC exclusive for 3 years running gives you anywhere from 20 to 60 million euros to pour into your next game, you're sadly mistaken.

  • Crysis 2

    Yeah but it's too easy that way JSL. If people complaining aren't willing to take part in a conversation and have actual answers other than joyfully bitching away at this or that because it's fun or they have the right to, then just as equally anyone else is entitled to dismiss their bitching entirely. I'm all for having a discussion and actual feedback from gamers, but it doesn't help if all they want to do is rip us a new one and not listen to the actual causes for their complaints. It really isn't going anywhere.

  • Crysis 2

    Yeah, by tweaking files without an interface. Both things that Crytek would have to work on, first testing the impact of all changes (debug time) and by creating the menu and interface specifically for the PC version, which would have required additional UI work, debug and translation. In other words, at least two weeks worth of a dozen's people work.

  • Crysis 2

    Quote from Vilham

    So you're saying that since we were a PC only game in 2007 we need to stick to these roots only until the end of time? The hardcore AAA PC market was still ok in 2007. This is 2011 now.

    If your point is that the game shouldn't have been called Crysis then, just try and pitch a brand new IP concept to a publisher that doesn't even own you. Good luck getting any funding.

    I was pointing out that adding a quick save to a PC version isn't as hard as your guys are making out, sure you have to make some decisions on what needs to be saved and what doesn't but that doesn't make it impossible to do otherwise your going to have to deal with fans that are gunna be very annoyed and probably won't buy your next game.

    Either way im done with this thread, I personally don't care what decisions you made as I don't have crysis 2 nor did I think the first was that amazing so I don't fall into the above group so it doesn't effect me, im just pointing out that whats his face had a valid complaint.

    You're totally right it's feasible. And yes it was decided we shouldn't have it. Because when we did study adding it, consoles screamed at us for raping them. Could we have added it for PC only? Yes maybe. With a few hundred man hours rewriting the entire save system.

  • Crysis 2

    Quote from Gloglebag

    I love the technical explanations behind the decisions, they give much better insight in to the how and why's. It's a shame a lot of the devs do not come out and say it themselves.To Furyo why is the 2011 PC market so much worse then it was in 2007. It was my understanding that over the years the PC market did not shrink, it expanded just not as rapidly as the console market did because they could target the casual crowd much better due to the lower cost and simplicity. And as far as I know the cost of making a AAA game in 2011 are the same as in 2007 for multiplats since consoles have not changed. So by all accounts all the major platforms including the PC are more profitable now then they were in 2007. It doesn't make sense to skip so much on the PC port, it's destroying your well respected brand for a few weeks of work.

    There are a lot of things that changed since 2007. The holiday season of 2007 was unarguably the real start of this generation. We saw the first AAA games of this gen come out all within a few months of each other, whereas all 3rd party games on x360 and ps3 up until that point were simply ports of PS2 and Xbox titles. Gears of War kinda was the first to pave the way, and if you need a reminder of how low detail certain 1st party games looked then, look no further than Resistance FoM.

    So yeah we are still in the same generation, but since 2007 competition has been going exponentially better. Whereas Resistance could pass like a good looking game then, you need to put out an Uncharted 2 or God of War 3 now to compete. And whereas Fallout 3 looked barely ok in 2008, New Vegas looks so dated it doesn't even qualify as current gen anymore. GTA, Red Dead Redemption and Assassin's Creed came by and took the throne.

    So yeah costs have gone up enormously, even within this gen. In the same timeframe, since 2007, the industry has seen a massive move of previously PC gamers to consoles. It's very understandable: 2007 marks the year X360 and PS3 (although the PS3 only really picked up after the Slim design) really started to sell. And the hardcore market has remained stable for over a decade now. There are no more hardcore gamers now than there were when Soldier of Fortune came out. These guys have moved on. They bought the X360 and the PS3, when all they could see from the industry was basically identical graphics they would find on their PC, with very hardcore niche games like Crysis providing one of only a handful of exceptions along the way.

    The PC market is doing well, but it's changed radically too. You still have that hardcore PC group, the likes of which would sell a kidney to go to QuakeCon. But by far and large the PC market is stuck on WoW, The Sims and Facebook.

    Finally, on to your last point, it's not just a few weeks worth of work. Allowing players to change the DoF on PC is only possible if you're using an engine that even was built with that in mind in the first place. CryEngine and Unreal will allow that technically speaking, other engines simply won't. And then you need to take into account everything else. For instance, optimization issues that arise from changing the DoF. Or your post effects that no longer get rendered well. There is never a simple change in a 3D engine.

  • Crysis 2

    Quote from Vilham

    I have worked on a multi-platform game, admittedly we decide to scrap a PC version entirely. But as a new franchise our fan base didn't come from the PC, so we weren't screwing anyone by significantly changing a game system.Thinking about it our game did basically quick save as it autosaved at many points (it was an open world game) and saved as much data as we felt necessary without breaking the gameplay.

    So you're saying that since we were a PC only game in 2007 we need to stick to these roots only until the end of time? The hardcore AAA PC market was still ok in 2007. This is 2011 now.

    If your point is that the game shouldn't have been called Crysis then, just try and pitch a brand new IP concept to a publisher that doesn't even own you. Good luck getting any funding.

  • Crysis 2

    Quote from Vilham

    I think you missed his point on A, furyo, just because the console can't have quicksave doesn't mean the PC can't.

    You missed my earlier point that PC games of multiplatform games will remain ports of the console versions since it costs too much money to maintain different assets and code bases for all.

  • Crysis 2

    Quote from Jetsetlemming

    A lot of those same hardcore PC guys are fine with non-AAA games, though. I know I am. I don't even have a PC good enough to run Crysis 2 on Extreme, my video card cost $60 on sale

    Anyway it's kind of a weird argument/discussion to have, because of what you might define as the features "everything the hardcore PC market wishes they could have". Frequently, that's "good controls, quicksave, options, stable". The "Just don't be RE4" school of thought. Even more frequently, that's "have the game be released at all (I want to play Red Read Revolver )". There really isn't that much of a difference for games made for the PC specifically from multiplatform games, just usability tweaks. I doubt you could find a single person on the internet to claim Half-life 2 is better than Episode 2, despite the former's PC exclusive development and the latter's multi-platform release. If you look past stupid stuff like "oh this one specific texture out of hundreds is lower resolution", the main issues I've heard with Crysis 2 are a) No quicksave, b) different from previous game in series, c) No security in online multiplayer, d) $60. B is kind of a marketing issue. D is out of anybody's control that would care about people complaining about it. A and C are totally fixable things that would make a lot of people happy. As far as the actual gameplay goes, I haven't read any real complaints about how it "plays like a console game" or something except for COD comparisons, which given the multiplayer model....

    A lot of PC gamers use consoles as a scapegoat for gameplay elements they don't like because the console focus and focus on regenerating health, cover systems, over the shoulder cameras, and terrible port jobs came in unison to their videogames. But we can easily be more specific than that and find real issues that can't and shouldn't be handwaved away.

    Quite to the contrary, and only game developers would understand the ramifications behind these subjects. A) Quicksave is a very touchy subject. It's not just "save and load at any time, you're already doing it in some locations, just enable it all the time". Quicksave requires ALL entities in the world to be toggable in a few frames. That means saving all current states of everything that's active. AI, particles, logic, etc etc. This takes ENORMOUS memory space and a LOT of CPU time. Guess what. Consoles don't have much to go around on top of trying to run a game like Crysis 2 on them. The reason save is only at very specific checkpoints on console games is precisely because designers control where it happens and they can unload as much as possible before saving. Otherwise the console crashes out of memory and you don't pass certification by Microsoft and Sony.

    B) is the hardest thing to do. Not different from previous games? Really? How many sequels have failed because they were "too much like the previous game". The reality is that consoles could not run Crysis 1 with the visual quality of the PC game. No way. Not this generation. So your decision is either change the design to something that can be run on consoles, don't go on consoles at all, or reduce the quality a LOT to try and fit it onto consoles. If you know anything about Crytek, you know two of these options are not even debatable.

    C) Totally agreed, a MP release with such huge open flaws is an epic fail. I hope Crytek can fix that before long.

    D) Publishers are trying to maximize their earnings on games they feel are strong enough to warrant it. MW2 started the trend of 60 dollars games, others have followed and more will come. They do it because they can, and if people aren't willing to pay for that, they simply wait and that's no reason to be complaining at all. Can't pay for it, don't get it. Period. Any self entitlement from any gamer to any developer because "they put the studio where it is by buying their product" goes right out the window if you know anything about the gaming industry. Publishers put the studios where they are, customers put the publishers where they are.

  • Crysis 2

    The truth of the matter is that until PC as a whole (retail + digital) begins to rake in as many millions of copies sold as the consoles do by themselves, you will never see a studio focusing an entire team on making the PC game feature everything the hardcore PC market (which btw is only a fraction of all these sales) wishes they would have in their games.

    So 14%, 20%, 25% doesn't matter diddly squat. Start moving 3 million copies on EACH platform then we can start talking. Until that comes, and it never will for AAA hardcore games anymore, you will continue to see PC games being ports of their console counterpart. That can, in some lucky cases, entail having lots of variable, or a DoF change, and plenty of options, but the game will remain designed for consoles in the first place.

    You cannot, in this day and age, justify creating a team of even as low as 20 people to make a PC version of a AAA game that would be so radically different than the console version. In the previous generation, you saw the last examples when production costs were 10% what they are now. Not anymore.

  • Luuk Waarbroek - Level Designer

    Rename "home" to "Games" or "Work"

    Seen as Gatling Gears doesn't exactly fall in the famous games category, I would work on presenting it in a stronger light, separating it from your personal projects (look at my website for a clear distinction for instance) as you need to show that you have some pro experience already, and aren't just a student looking for a position.