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Watch_Dogs original graphical effects (E3 2012/13) found in game files [PC]

C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
jim-jam bongs said:
Both of you are arguing against something I'm not even saying. Console parity isn't what I'm claiming as the reason for these omitted effects and shaders, I'm saying that the advanced effects were created before knowing if the consoles could handle them. When they found that they were piling too much on for the PS4 and the Xbone, they ceased development on these effects rather than tweak and debug them further since only the PC version would ultimately benefit. The fact that another game uses one of the effects already actually strengthens that claim, because it suggests that Watch_Dogs is doing more overall which made it necessary to remove things considered to be trivial in order to achieve an acceptable level of performance.

That's not a claim of conspiracy, it's honest speculation based on the realities of software development and market priorities. Everything in development comes with a cost, they decided that the cost was too high for the benefit gained.
Click to expand...
Ah ok I see what you're saying now. Yea and you're most likely correct or on the right track. Certainly much more on track than the people claiming that they only took them out for console parity.
 
GavinUK86

GavinUK86

Member
Introducing the where-the-hell-did-i-put-my-glasses mod
watch_dogs_2014_06_16_15_57_36_016_by_gavinuk86-d7mlxsf.jpg
Click to expand...
 
prag16

prag16

Banned
RK9039 said:
?

Horse Armour is on point as always.
Click to expand...

What? No he's not... He just implied that PS4 is more powerful than any PC that doesn't have more than 5GB GDDR5...

"Retarded" certainly is not the word I would have used, but "incorrect" and/or "misleading" definitely fit.
 
S

solarus

Member
All of the posters calling people crazy for saying there was a huge downgrade in those threads before release (like the nvidia pc trailer) have a lot of delicous crow to eat right now.
 
S

scitek

Member
prag16 said:
What? No he's not... He just implied that PS4 is more powerful than any PC that doesn't have more than 5GB GDDR5...

"Retarded" certainly is not the word I would have used, but "incorrect" and/or "misleading" definitely fit.
Click to expand...

lol Horse Armour's not serious.
 
Symax

Symax

Member
Maybe ubisoft wanted modders to hack the game in order to unlock the settings. It's a part of the gameplay experience.
 
J

jim2point0

Banned
prag16 said:
What? No he's not... He just implied that PS4 is more powerful than any PC that doesn't have more than 5GB GDDR5...

"Retarded" certainly is not the word I would have used, but "incorrect" and/or "misleading" definitely fit.
Click to expand...

8GB GDDR5 is sorta his running joke. Gotta admire him for sticking with it all this time. But yeah, he's not serious :p
 
R

R_Deckard

Member
jim-jam bongs said:
Both of you are arguing against something I'm not even saying. Console parity isn't what I'm claiming as the reason for these omitted effects and shaders, I'm saying that the advanced effects were created before knowing if the consoles could handle them. When they found that they were piling too much on for the PS4 and the Xbone, they ceased development on these effects rather than tweak and debug them further since only the PC version would ultimately benefit. The fact that another game uses one of the effects already actually strengthens that claim, because it suggests that Watch_Dogs is doing more overall which made it necessary to remove things considered to be trivial in order to achieve an acceptable level of performance.

That's not a claim of conspiracy, it's honest speculation based on the realities of software development and market priorities. Everything in development comes with a cost, they decided that the cost was too high for the benefit gained.
Click to expand...

I see what you are saying, but my take on this is that the Original vision irrespective of platform was too lofty for the engine, scale and sheer amount of versions they wanted to ship.

Ubisoft are a large corporate and they will have many sections working on the game in separate parts of the world (you can see the cutscenes in the game are not consistent in quality) let alone office. Bug tweaking, version control literately everything about this game has been a mess and a mix-up from PR to launch and I the visuals from the E3 reveal are possible and most likely will be beaten on these "lowly" consoles within the next 12 months, you could argue Second Son already does!

Cross Gen, Cross Platform, Launch games are never ever indicative of a Generations potential or ability and I feel this game falls into the "too many cooks, not enough time camp" for sure and saying they made a conscious effort to cut effects (that they spent time working into a broken state in the game but employed in the cutscene's (headlights in rain, stronger DoF etc) even on consoles just has chaos and time written all over it.
 
R

rashbeep

Banned
prag16 said:
What? No he's not... He just implied that PS4 is more powerful than any PC that doesn't have more than 5GB GDDR5...

"Retarded" certainly is not the word I would have used, but "incorrect" and/or "misleading" definitely fit.
Click to expand...

He's an effective troll is what he is.
 
I

InsuRn

Member
This is why I like gaming on PC, this right here is an awesome thing made possible by fan/modders. Kudos !
One question: does it run better than the normal game on AMD GPU ?
 
A

a916

Member
drexplora said:
its crazy how hard they were pushing for the 1080p standard last gen. Specially Sony with the PS3 and it's weaker GPU. Neither consoles were ready for that and it set up the precedent that its 1080p or nuttin...

In some ways the new gen consoles aren't ready to handle 1080p along with stepping up the visuals and gameplay to "newgen" levels. PC gamers haven't had to upgrade when transitioning to the 'new gen', and it shows just how much visuals are toned down to match ballpark console levels.

It sucks cause it is an artificial barrier imposed on us...
I feel it is holding back gaming as a whole! A booming PC gaming market can only mean good things for the consoles, yet they don't embrace the capabilities of the PC in a lame attempt to add a cheap coat of fresh paint on an old, same ol box..

Sometimes we wonder why these nex gens just aren't wowing us the way they used to?!
Well part of the reason are developers like Ubisoft and their "business ideals" holding back the potential for what 'GAMES' (at the end of the day regardless of the platform were all doing the same damn thing) could be.
Which would ultimately have a positive effect on all gaming markets...
Trickle down economics.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure they cater to the demographic that puts the most money in their pocket... and unfortunately for you, that's consoles.
 
C

Chance Hale

Member
The forced parity argument seems a bit silly given the PC version as it comes is already a lot better looking than the PS4 version. More like odd incompetence? Wonder what the justification will be.
 
C

cascardian

Member
jim-jam bongs said:
Both of you are arguing against something I'm not even saying. Console parity isn't what I'm claiming as the reason for these omitted effects and shaders, I'm saying that the advanced effects were created before knowing if the consoles could handle them. When they found that they were piling too much on for the PS4 and the Xbone, they ceased development on these effects rather than tweak and debug them further since only the PC version would ultimately benefit. The fact that another game uses one of the effects already actually strengthens that claim, because it suggests that Watch_Dogs is doing more overall which made it necessary to remove things considered to be trivial in order to achieve an acceptable level of performance.

That's not a claim of conspiracy, it's honest speculation based on the realities of software development and market priorities. Everything in development comes with a cost, they decided that the cost was too high for the benefit gained.
Click to expand...

This is most likely correct. My jimmies are still rustled, though, because I'm tired of these 'development realities' happening over and over again to (PC) gamers. I know that making a AAA video game is small management miracle every time it actually comes together as a cohesive whole, but there does seem to one particular party of paying customers always getting the short end of that stick. And what is really egregious is all the lying and making bollocks excuses that we end up with from their corporate PR trying to spin it every which way. Just doing their jobs, of course, but the decision making ladder has to end somewhere.
 
J

jim-jam bongs

Member
R_Deckard said:
.
Click to expand...

R_Deckard said:
I see what you are saying, but my take on this is that the Original vision irrespective of platform was too lofty for the engine, scale and sheer amount of versions they wanted to ship.

Ubisoft are a large corporate and they will have many sections working on the game in separate parts of the world (you can see the cutscenes in the game are not consistent in quality) let alone office. Bug tweaking, version control literately everything about this game has been a mess and a mix-up from PR to launch and I the visuals from the E3 reveal are possible and most likely will be beaten on these "lowly" consoles within the next 12 months, you could argue Second Son already does!

Cross Gen, Cross Platform, Launch games are never ever indicative of a Generations potential or ability and I feel this game falls into the "too many cooks, not enough time camp" for sure and saying they made a conscious effort to cut effects (that they spent time working into a broken state in the game but employed in the cutscene's (headlights in rain, stronger DoF etc) even on consoles just has chaos and time written all over it.
Click to expand...

...

I can't believe that you accused me of being defensive.
 
A

AU Tiger

Member
That over the top DOF makes this look like all those skyrim ENB's that make the game unplayable because you can't see anything but great for screenshots.

Still not gonna buy the game yet. I want to see where this mod ends up and if you can adjust the strength of that DOF/Bokeh.

I also want to hear an honest response from Ubi on why they still deserve my money after we've seen this.
 
captainnapalm

captainnapalm

Member
cascardian said:
This is most likely correct. My jimmies are still rustled, though, because I'm tired of these 'development realities' happening over and over again to (PC) gamers.
Click to expand...

But we're what, 1-2% of the market? I remember when they released the first-weekend sales figures for Watch Dogs across all platofrms - PC wasn't even listed in the breakdown. That's the unfortunate reality.
 
derExperte

derExperte

Member
captainnapalm said:
But we're what, 1-2% of the market? I remember when they released the first-weekend sales figures for Watch Dogs across all platofrms - PC wasn't even listed in the breakdown. That's the unfortunate reality.
Click to expand...

I can't remember them breaking down the sales numbers at all and the Steam statistics showed that many, many more played W_D concurrently than did AC4 at it's peak. They sold quite a bunch on PC.
 
J

jim2point0

Banned
AU Tiger said:
That over the top DOF makes this look like all those skyrim ENB's that make the game unplayable because you can't see anything but great for screenshots.

Still not gonna buy the game yet. I want to see where this mod ends up and if you can adjust the strength of that DOF/Bokeh.

I also want to hear an honest response from Ubi on why they still deserve my money after we've seen this.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I turn the DOF off in the options unless I think it will be useful for a pretty screenshot. It's too overpowering when you're running around looking at eye level.

Also, I don't think you'll see a response from Ubisoft. What you see here is likely the same thing that happens to all downgraded games. Optimization tends to happen towards the end of a game's development (and even after release with patches). Devs start with an unrealistic goal of what they can achieve and throw in all kinds of bells and whistles. Before they know it, they're getting 10-15 FPS on actual console hardware and need to downgrade aggressively to make the game run smoothly. Due to time constraints, they aren't going to do this separately for consoles and PC, so PC gets the same downgrades.

That's just speculation on my part but it makes sense to me.
 
D

Dire

Member
ricochetguro said:
The forced parity argument seems a bit silly given the PC version as it comes is already a lot better looking than the PS4 version. More like odd incompetence? Wonder what the justification will be.
Click to expand...

There's better looking and then there's making people with their new shiny consoles feel like they're getting the last gen version. I imagine Ubisoft is going to try to completely ignore this. It'll be interesting to see what happens if it blows up anymore.
 
Raven77

Raven77

Member
Has UBI commented on this yet or tweeted anything on this yet?

Pretty despicable if they did it just to keep parity.
 
P

Pimpwerx

Member
ricochetguro said:
The forced parity argument seems a bit silly given the PC version as it comes is already a lot better looking than the PS4 version. More like odd incompetence? Wonder what the justification will be.
Click to expand...
Maybe the obvious lack of polish. I don't have this, but from reading the thread, it sounds like dof, shadows and some of the other effects mentioned all have something not right about them. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy or incompetence. It could just be that it wasn't budgeted for. Getting it working seemlessly might not have been worth the effort. PEACE.
 
N

Nzyme32

Member
AU Tiger said:
That over the top DOF makes this look like all those skyrim ENB's that make the game unplayable because you can't see anything but great for screenshots.

Still not gonna buy the game yet. I want to see where this mod ends up and if you can adjust the strength of that DOF/Bokeh.

I also want to hear an honest response from Ubi on why they still deserve my money after we've seen this.
Click to expand...

Already fixed in the next 0.7 version already. Bear in mind this is just one guy and it is a work in progress. Much of the shaders and other features are yet to be implemented

hamchan said:
Is there really a fix for the stuttering just hidden in the game files? Because that's fairly disgusting if true.
Click to expand...

This has been mostly fixed as the mod changes the way that the textures are streamed now. I don't think it was quite that the fix was just sitting there. Also capable 2GB cards are seeing decent performance improvements even with the enhancements thanks to the improvements of the mod
 
captainnapalm

captainnapalm

Member
derExperte said:
I can't remember them breaking down the sales numbers at all and the Steam statistics showed that many, many more played W_D concurrently than did AC4 at it's peak. They sold quite a bunch on PC.
Click to expand...

This was posted on here a while back:

WD 1st week in UK
PS4 49%
Xbone 27%
X360 13%
PS3 9%

If true, you start to realise why PC gaming doesn't get the attention from devs it deserves. Granted, that's only UK, but I imagine it will be similar elsewhere.
 
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