AstroZombie
Banned
They should hire Durante, Nwks and the gentleman that did the mouse & keyboard mod.
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Dark Souls: PTD sells 300,000 on PC, better PC dev. promised, DS2 was debuted on PC
- Thread starter Nyoro SF
- Start date
I didn't expect any "glitz." I knew it was going to be a barebones port. I expected that it would have a locked framerate and that the m/kb controls would suck despite potentially being far superior to a gamepad. I didn't however expect that the rendering resolution would be locked at 1024x720. That is simply inexcusable for a game like this, it just screams of laziness and incompetence. Now From made a great game, but don't make any excuses for the state of the PC version.
why would you not expect it when it was pretty much explicitly stated months and months prior
AcceptableGhost
Member
What did Dark Souls PC version need to do for you to buy it?
Does the 60FPS mod still have collision issues? Sliding down ladders through the ground sounds like a pretty bad time.
EvilKatarn
Member
You are gamer entitlement given flesh. I didn't even think that was a real thing, but you embody it.
Becuase it was such an unbelievable claim that I assumed something must have been lost in translation ("perhaps they meant the texture resolution?"). Releasing the game with a fixed rendering resolution worse than what was the standard 10 years ago is just unacceptable.
This is true, I can still see Enkidu's point though. A 3D game on PC with a locked rendering resolution goes beyond "extremely basic", it was so unprecedented that it's not hard to understand why people (including me) couldn't believe it.
It is a bit like releasing a PS3 port of a PC game which only supports keyboard and mouse controls. If the developer said in an interview before release "we will support the same controls that we do on PC" people would assume that they mean that kb/m will be supported on the PS3 version in addition to gamepad controls.
The difference between Dark Souls and all the games that your "base rules" come from is that Dark Souls was, from the ground up, made to run in a fixed resolution and at 30fps. The fact that the game can even enter 15fps on consoles without going into slow motion is almost a hack if you look at it from the perspective of Western game engine development. The porting process isn't exactly like Assassin's Creed or whatever.
Not to say that it's a good port in the slightest, just that it's a case of the developers not bothering to go even an inch out of their way rather than intentionally crippling it.
1080p/60fps to start with. That's the absolute bare minimum that every PC game needs to have, and 99.999% of games use it. I'll add good mouse+keyboard controls too for other PC people although I can work without it.
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
ITT: People become familiar with Derrick's essence.
The 30fps cap is understandable (I believe running the game at 60fps slightly breaks the jumping physics or some such), but the locked rendering resolution was completely arbitrary, as Durante proved mere hours after the game unlocked.
Well nothing was lost in translation. Maybe you should've trusted them.
Hah, I made the exact same mistake. My mind refused to accept what he was saying.
Except that 60FPS breaks the physics engine... so you're saying that making the game unplayable is what's required for you to play it?
I definitely agree that it's odd, but it's not going to stop me from buying the game. If the game had no controller support, I could see that as being something worth clamoring about, but that's far different than video and resolution support. I mean, to be honest I've never perfectly understood the fervor for high-resolution graphics, at least not in games. Personally I think there's something to be said for locking a game at a resolution for the purpose of preserving a certain experience associated with it.
Which is to say that there's a real difference in the experience between resolutions, and in some ways it makes it difficult to relate experiences to one another. I suppose Blu-Ray re-releases and HD ports are some indication that this may not matter much to people (or even the remediation we see of movies -> VHS, etc.).
You better get used to it. Derrick posts a lot and his outlook on gaming and the gaming industry is extremely consistent.
Aren't some of the effects on monsters broken? Don't remember well.
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
... You do know people are playing the game at 60FPS, right? It's not unplayable. It just has a few small problems, like quickly descending ladders.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Having new DLC levels and missing resolution options was a concept hard to wrap the mind around.
That would be no improvement at all. DRM-free please.
300k copies is decent for a late port, I guess.
EvilKatarn
Member
Well, if he's at least consistent then that's okay. I've seen master racers be so hypocritical it's made me sick.
AcceptableGhost
Member
Some of the systems in this game are designed around a fixed timestep, last time I checked the 60FPS mod creates physics issues (sliding down ladders into a black void, and IIRC the jumps becomes shorter making some jumps impossible).
Yes, I am sure that From Software would love to release a game where sliding down ladders at 60FPS kills you.
Glass Rebel
Member
hahaha
I'm not denying that (well, I wouldn't say that setting up a resolution option and testing it is a tall order even for a developer inexperienced with the PC -- PhyreEngine is multiplatform engine inclusive of the PC, after all), but the language of your post implied that the rendering resolution was locked for practical reasons, which evidently isn't the case.
Not that I've noticed, but then it's not as though I've completed the game.
I lost a 60+ hour save because the character would automatically clip through the floor upon loading and fall for about 30 seconds or so before dying, only to respawn into an endless loop.
I can't confirm whether this was because of DSFix or just a natural bug in Dark Souls, but it happened.
Acerac
Banned
I'm sure there's plenty of other games that Derrick01 would like, right?
Dictator93
Member
That is a dark souls bug.
It happened to me before the 60fps fix came out, i luckily had a back up of a previous save though.
Not as far as I know.
It's not unplayable (I completed the entire game with 60 FPS), but it's also not up to the quality expected for a commercial release.
As such, I can understand (though not endorse!) the 30 FPS limit for a low-budget port. It's not unprecedented, it has happened before with quite a few games and it will likely happen again. And there is no way to tell how much effort would have been required to iron out those physics/collision quirks. But the resolution issue is literally at most, with testing and GUI selection, a one-week job when you are doing the port. It's hard to defend that.
Should have turned on save backups
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
You're right, I'm sure it is absolutely impossible to fix with access to the source code.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this. It's not a widespread issue and what you describe could have happened on a console too.
At least Durante's mod gives you the option to automatically back-up your save.
Oh, let me be clear: I understand why they did the 30fps cap and it wouldn't have even bothered me that much if it was never fixed. However, describing the game as unplayable at 60fps is a downright lie.
Steamworks isn't nearly as bad as GFWL. There are a lot of Steamworks-supported games that you're free to buy on other services that don't have Steamworks. There are even plenty of games with DRM-Free versions that use Steamworks in their Steam versions. The same isn't true of GFWL games, which always must have GFWL embedded in their game. So I dunno why you guys are acting like it's either-or (though it's unlikely From will release a completely DRM-free version of Dark Souls 2 because, come on).
jim-jam bongs
Member
Nah, it's all there. Maybe if you turn on things like ambient occlusion which I left off, but certainly if you stick to just using higher resolution and downsampling it's all good.
I figured it was probably more on the side of Dark Souls rather than DSFix.
Unfortunately, I had no backups, but I did finish the game. It really wasn't all that big of a deal. I would have liked to use it to play New Game+, but it's not important.
Acerac
Banned
Ugly games are unplayable? Or does his mod actually change gameplay in some fashion?
Metalmurphy
Member
That didn't look good for a PC debut. It still looked sub native.
Makes it run at 60fps, tweaks hud, adds SSAO, etc.
Makes it run at 60fps, tweaks hud, adds SSAO, etc.
My point was that they didn't sell you a bill of goods or anything. Do you actively despise every single release that wasn't up to perfect PC standards?
And the port wasn't garbage. You could play through the game from start to finish without issue, and it was a great game at that.
DSFix makes it a much better looking and feeling game, but the vanilla experience is perfectly serviceable.
Basically, you're hyperbolizing to a ridiculous extent.
If something distracts my enjoyment of the experience to such a degree that I do not even want to play the game at all, I would say that is rather unplayable.
Not by the literal definition of course, but there isn't anyone on the internet that is literal all the time.
AcceptableGhost
Member
It depends. I am working on a fixed time-step game right now (2D at 60FPS) and lets just say... this game runs at one frame rate and only one frame rate.
Also, people please stop asking for From Software or Namco to pay me. I made a mod out of my own free will, and let's be completely frank here, primarily motivated by (a) not wanting to play the game with shitty IQ and (b) wanting to prove people wrong who told me that it's incredibly hard to change the rendering resolution of the game.
I didn't do it for you (though I'm happy it helped so many people and maybe made the game a bit more successful on PC) and I certainly didn't do it expecting any reimbursement or even acknowledgement from either the developer or the publisher!
I didn't do it for you (though I'm happy it helped so many people and maybe made the game a bit more successful on PC) and I certainly didn't do it expecting any reimbursement or even acknowledgement from either the developer or the publisher!
That's what Derrick always does, just get used to it. At least he doesn't play favorites!
spandexmonkey
Banned
Man I remember during release people wishing the pc version was canned because it was so bad and FROM never attempt another pc game again. Glad we'll be seeing more Souls games on the pc.
Acerac
Banned
Fair enough. It's just that with so many people saying it I assumed that there'd be some merit behind it.
I'm just amazed that these changes make the game go from unplayable to one of the best games of the generation for SO MANY PEOPLE. Granted, I love the changes it brings, but holy shit that's a lot of hyperbole.
I've never played the console version, is it locked in at 720p with 30 fps? Is this version unplayable? Or is it fine because it's on a console?