Posts by Jetsetlemming

I'm fine with 47 killing dudes, and getting in firefights. His cover's been blown by the plot, and having the rules and parameters go out the window due to desperate times were always interesting moments in the old games and is not at all a bad concept for the sequel. But it looks so scripted! With all the dialog and behavior of the NPCs, and the not very big level, and no "safe zone" apparently where you can safely explore before taking risks, and the special camera angles for stuff like jumping from building to building, it looked not at all Hitman. It looked Splinter Cell.

Also I don't know how things work in Norway but here in America (where Chicago is conveniently located) we have rules, and police helicopters don't just start shooting at unarmed suspects. I hope that's fixed for the release, gotta respect realism you know :cop:

Also, man, I had no idea "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right" was such a controversial idea.

I checked the steam hardware survey, and AMD doesn't have 40%, Nvidia just has 60%. AMD splits that 40 with Intel. Apparently a whole 6% of Steam users use intel graphics. I am absolutely flabbergasted.

Anyway that's still a third of users who payed for a game and got bullshit with a promise to make it less bullshit later.

Also when I said the stuff about not releasing at all, I was thinking of RE4 PC, or Saint's Row 2 (SR2 PC was actually totally fixable by mods, that work really should've been put in officially though, rather than requiring people seek out mods and shit. The unofficial patch for Vampire Bloodlines does not forgive Troila, no matter how good their artistic content was on that game). Thank God for Capcom's new engine. RE5 is great on PC, except for some clumsy default key bindings that I am totally free to change. I've been meaning to replay it, but the first couple chapters with all the stuff you've got from a New Game+ make it kinda boring.

The Radeon line and their drivers are pretty bad anymore, yeah. The card was cheap and for the games without issues (Which, to be fair, is 95%+ of them), run great. I paid $60 over a year ago and can run the BF3 beta at 30FPS on low. But the driver shit is just too unreliable (plus no proper scaling options that preserve aspect ratio. What is the point of even HAVING scaling options if you're just gonna horribly skew 4:3 to my 16:10 display? Ughhh.)

My next build, I'm thinking AMD processor (Sandy Bridge CPUs are nice but expensive as hell, I don't want to spend $180 on just the processor), Nvidia graphics. Hopefully I'll be able to build it as a nice christmas present for myself this winter. If I once again aim low on graphics (was eyeballing a Geforce 550 ti a couple days ago for $120), I can even keep my current 400w Corsair psu.

Anyway, all that is besides the point. Bethesda/id pushed the "release the game" butan on Steam knowing that the proper AMD drivers weren't out yet, they weren't public until a few hours after release. And they were pushed to such a deadline that clearly nobody had even installed the stupid things and ran the game they were designed for, as they were universally dogshit, causing widespread cases of terrible experiences and another day's delay before proper "Preview Drivers" were out. The game's release should've been delayed until that crap with Catalyst was squared properly and ready for showtime. While the issues were AMD's fault, id still should've held back on the game to avoid AMD's egg on their face. No matter who was at fault or what you think of PC development or any of that shit, the consumers suffered, and they shouldn't have.

Holy shit, that Breaking Bad finale. SO amazing. I was kinda expecting them to keep up the tension and foreboding and dread that the season had been building up to, but instead they very smartly relieve the tension, solve the major dramas of the season, and give the audience some major pathos and good vibes. It was fucking awesome. And next sunday they're easing straight into Walking Dead, woo.

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":38k8taz2]I still have no idea why some people keep whining about PC gaming is dead... in the last two months alone, I had two of the most awesome experiences on my PC in the last few years (DX:HR and Rage) and BF3 is out in a month AND Skyrim as well... And this year we had a lot of cool releases as well, Bulletstorm, Crysis 2, Portal 2, Witcher 2, etc, etc, etc!So PC Gaming is dead my ASS! PC gaming is more alive than ever...

Bulletstorm had Rage-esque technical issues for me, unfortunately. Weird color banding, black blocks instead of blood effects, bad stutter in a lot of places, etc.

Far cry from "100% working" to "A huge portion of the userbase without it working". Carmack has publicly blamed AMD for the issues, saying AMD should've had the right drivers out before Rage, but when it was clear that that wasn't going to happen there should've been a last minute delay until those drivers WERE out and working. Or at the very least a public apology and warning to all AMD users that the game isn't yet ready for them due to outside issues.

You don't have to cover all hardware/software specs, but you should know and acknowledge what you are and aren't supporting, and the public should know that. People shouldn't have to buy games that won't run on their computers, or won't run acceptably. Minimum requirements should be more than just "overall windows version, overall direct x version, some vague bullshit about core speed and model numbers tacked on".

With digital distribution and online activations, you don't even need a public who can understand that shit. They should be warned before purchase or activation that their hardware is not supported, and offered a refund if applicable. This is reducing sales, technically, but it's also vastly reducing bullshit and public ill will.

I can't help but think of the people for whom rage's release was the final straw for them for PC gaming, because they had an AMD card. With the trip reports I saw of some people, especially with quite a few people saying the game would just crash on launch for them, they probably aren't sticking around for a patch or a driver update. It's not even a week since the game's release. If it had been delayed on PC that one week, so that the AMD shit could get worked out before it was exposed to the world, manchildren and teenagers would've grumbled a bit, but a lot more positive first impressions would've been had, and there'd been a lot less shit on id.

Quote from Erratic

Rage works fine now. What are you on about. Get some internet and patch it.

Wait, I forgot RAGE is the first rocky PC release ever. id has blemished an other wise pristine record.

I never bought the game. And its widespread, basically uniform behavior on AMD hardware (roughly ~40% of the market) is different from a buggy launch or something. It's also got UI/control issues on PC, for example by default it has mouse smoothing and you need to use a launch option or cfg edit to disable it, and apparently if you turn down the mouse speed enough it becomes apparent that thumbstick-esque behavior like jumping to hotspots and deadzones etc. are in the game's mouse behavior.

Quote from Sentura

jetset lemming, you can't compare popcap games to everything else. they're small scale games that will run on pretty much any computer because they don't need much processing power to function. when you're dealing with complex graphics and AI in large numbers you'll have to look at things differently. a console is a standardized machine. it means it will run on every machine just the same, so developers can focus on just one type of setting, rather than on the ginormous scale that a PC has the ability to be. a 1ghz process with an old radeon 9600SE and 1gb ram gets lumped into the same category as any new super computer, and developers will waste time trying to make a good version for both, rather than just 1 version that fits all.

Don't give a shit. If you can't make a passable PC game, don't make a PC game. But if you want that market, then you have to earn it with effort. Nobody's going to buy a PC port out of pity or duty, or care about the excuses about how there's lots of hardware configurations. No consumer cares about any hardware except what they personally are using. If you can't accomplish a task, don't half-ass it, release the laughably poor results, and then expect anyone to care, or any sympathy when you blame the PC for your bad game. If id didn't or couldn't put in the proper work to make Rage a proper PC game then they should've either not released a PC port, or used Unreal Engine 3 for its PC support.

Also having system requirements if fine. Hell, if Rage came with a Nvidia-only clause, and if you were using an AMD card Steam popped up and said "Hey don't buy this game", then I'm sure while people would grumble, they wouldn't be nearly as angry. Once the "AMD Support Patch" was released a few weeks later or whatever, then that restriction goes away and everyone plays the game and everyone's happy. People will always take a delay over a shitty experience, and Rage delivered a shitty experience on releasefor the ~40% of the market using AMD hardware. When the 360 came out and so lots and lots of PC games started being DX9-only, some people complained. I know I wasn't too pleased at the time, when Bioshock came out I had a Radeon 9250 and it required a 9500 or better, so wouldn't run at all for me. But I knew that going into the demo, and I didn't buy the game until after I got my 8800gt at a later time, and "Bioshock didn't support DX8 video cards!" isn't exactly a lasting part of the game's fame. Just Cause 2 did the same thing with DX10. I didn't buy the game when it came out because I was on XP, but when I upgraded to Windows 7 it was my first game purchase after the upgrade, and the game's absolutely fantastic. I'm glad they didn't have to dilute the performance, technical behavior, or bug testing for outdated windows and outdated hardware. It's totally a valid option for developers to take. Afaik BF3 is doing the same thing, and I haven't heard a single peep of negativity about that.

Also related to Rockstar: Judging by their statements and how they're bringing out LA Noire on PC, it looks like, if I read between the lines, like they totally were making a Red Dead Redemption PC version, but the console versions of that game were already buggy and weird, and they couldn't get it working on PC, so they cancelled the port. Lamentable, but better than releasing just one more turd nobody will like onto the market.

I believe that Mario guy had a relevant quote to that. Something about better late and good than early and shit. Personally, I'd prefer every developer treat the PC like Valve or Popcap or Blizzard does, but I'm more willing to wait than put up with how Rage behaved on my Radeon-equipped PC. There really is no such problem as "too few games", for anyone, or any platform (except 3DS I guess ). I don't need to play Rage. I don't want to play Rage if Rage is gonna play like it did.

The point isn't PC exclusivity, it's not treating computers as some retard box afterthought with no effort put into it. Look at Popcap. All of their games are on all platforms in existence, and yet I've never played a Popcap game on PC that had any issues at all, control-wise or technical shit. I don't mind at all spreading shit about, I'm pretty much pro spreading shit about. I just don't like it when the PC version of a game is a pile of shit with no thought put into the controls and the mouse poorly emulating a thumb stick and a "You're a pirate fuck off you terrible person (but give us sixty dollars for this pile of dogshit)" Ubisoft-esque attitude. I don't care what teeny tiny little percentage you pull out of your ass to characterize PC gaming and its market share, if the version's worth releasing at all, then put some fucking effort into it and make sure it actually plays well. If you're making RE4 PC, don't even bother releasing that bullshit. The PC doesn't have a problem of too few games, it's too many shitty no effort games that turn people off from the platform, like Rage did for a bunch of AMD users.

Despite all the performance issues GTA4 had on release because it was designed for better processors than were typical on PCs back then (heh consoles ruining things), design-wise the game played absolutely perfectly with keyboard and mouse, and had tons of video options and tweaks so you could make it run on your budget dual core (but it'd look pretty assy for it), and I never had it crash or bug out for me playing through roughly half of the normal campaign and Ballad of Gay Tony each.

Quote from Rick_D

as for "consoles". you guys are retarded. devs would love to build for a sytem that has obscene hardware and can crank up the settings to MAXIMUMOVERDRIVE. but look at half-life 2, they had a shitload of backwards compatibility right from the start, they still supported dx7 until a couple of years ago. you really think devs can afford to just say "fuck you consoles" and stay in business?

It's working out ok for blizzard

Why would you want to steer with the mouse? Scrub. You steer with WASD with proper acceleration of steering like in a GTA game, and use the mouselook for vastly superior knowledge of your surroundings, plus the ability to put the camera low to the ground in front of your car and get kickin rad screenshots.

I really can't envision how you'd combine cover and bullet time in any satisfying way. It just seems like you'd use it to cheat at the typical cover shooter whack-a-mole game, and that seems incredibly worthless. I may be biased however because I'm only ok with cover when it's used for stealth, like deus ex and metal gear. I want to be dodging enemy fire and killing them quickly and stunlocking them with shotgun blasts and owning faces. Max Payne 2 is pretty much the absolute best third person shooter ever released imo. I even still replay it, I'm not just going on nostalgia, either.

I don't have an xbox controller (just a PS3 one that can imitate an xbox controller if neccesary ). I also can drive fine with a keyboard and mouse, and found myself really annoyed that in Rage you don't have mouselook while driving like in GTA games.

Cover would replace Bullet Time. Max doesn't hide from bullets, he dodges them, or kills enemies before they can even shoot. Kinda like how Doom Guy doesn't hide from fireballs, he circle strafes at fifty miles an hour.

Quote from dux

It loves telling me how to look up and down at the beginning first. I didn't know how to do that, thanks game!

Also holy low res textures batman. I'm running the max max config and some of this looks like ass. Thanks consoles.

They've said constantly throughout development that the textures were limited by disk space, not by performance, due to how everything's unique and streamed in. The game's already 22GB.