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Dark Souls PC post-embargo impressions [30fps, locked 1024x720 internal framebuffer]

Waaghals

Member
The developers must be immensely talented.

I wasn't aware that it was even possible to completely lock down the resolution like that.
It must have been a tremendous challenge to even make that work.

The game runs on a multiplatform engine so it definitely supports custom resolutions from the get go.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
Uh... wasn't this known shortly after the port was announced?

It was reported by people who could've just as well been lunatics holding "the world is going to end" signs...noone believed them, though sadly in this case they were right.
 

Alex

Member
Can't believe people pre-ordered this shit after all the press about it along the way.

I'm not happy about things, but it's still the best version. I want a stable 30 FPS and I want to play the DLC, so I'm content with the 30 I paid for for my pre-order.

It's complete bullshit but unless there was something legitimately wrong with it outside of visual settings simply being par, I'll deal. Don't understand why they couldn't simply outsource it though, so fucking goofy.
 
OP should also add that the game will kick you out of your game and back to the menu if your framerate drops below 15fps for more than 30 seconds

The hell?

This should be a PSA for PC users like for Steel Battalion when reviews were hitting: DONT BUY THIS GAME.

So I guess all those people port-begging for PC version just to have a smooth Blighttown feel pretty sorry now, are Japanese developers usually this bad with PC ports? I guess PC is not a popular platform over there to care enough.
 

Lafiel

と呼ぶがよい
Not buying this day one anymore. But I'll definitely get my hands on it during the steam sale. Who knows, maybe from software / namco will cave in to fan pressure and release a patch that fixes this.:/
 
PC Gamers the biggest drama queens of them all.

1. It will be modded within weeks
2. Motion Blur will hide the majority of jaggies
3. I think you're all afraid of dying :D Capra Demon too much for yas?

1. No guarantees on that front. Modding the framebuffer on a proprietary engine doesn't sound that easy
2. No, that's awful
3. No, just afraid to waste superior hardware on a shitty port
 

Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
I wouldn't be too certain about a steady framerate, from the RPS preview:

Although I didn’t see any huge stutters I didn’t see any of the areas that suffered in that way on the consoles. The framerate does fluctuate from place to place though, with some areas noticeably slower than others
 

Herb

Banned
Don't really care about the texture lock, the game still is >720p. The frame-rate issue won't bother me much either. A stable 30 is worth it, and if there are ini tweaks to get to 60, then it's far superior to the console versions. The covenants should actually all be functioning, and there is the matchmaking and DLC too.
 

mxgt

Banned
If you are playing Dark Souls and bitching about resolution-you have a problem. Of all things to bitch about in the game: graphics are so not even important.

We have every right to expect a PC game to render at a monitors native resolution. Not being able to is extremely lazy and just not acceptable.

I have a huge monitor, I don't want to play Dark Souls in a window that doesn't even take up half my screen.

also: 30fps and drops isn't smooth. Going by the resolution disaster the frame rate is going to be a mess as well
 

c0Zm1c

Member
I lost interest in getting the PC version after reading about this on Eurogamer.

"In terms of the PC version, the quick answer is no, [we won't be fixing the frame rate problems]. Because we wanted to get the PC version out as soon as possible, it's more strictly a port from the console version. We haven't been able to step up into doing any specific optimisation for PC.

As I said in the other thread, developers like that don't deserve your money.
 
After all the news about how shitty the port is, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that it it still suffers from the frame rate issues of the console versions
 

Kritz

Banned
Uh... wasn't this known shortly after the port was announced?

Enough people on this forum seemed to do a lot of damage control in the way of "stop spreading false information, of course the game isn't locked to 720p. It was a translation error!" to make me believe no PC game ever could possibly have its resolution locked.

Kinda baffled at some of the dudes in this thread playing the "PC gamers are entitled" card. When nearly every PC game in existence lets you pick a resolution. As in, it is the single most basic feature a game on the platform has. Crazy.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Yeah, that is my question. I won't argue that this is a shitty port, but literally everything I've seen leading up to this has been the studio warning fans that it would be one. Didn't they literally say that they had no real experience coding for the PC?

To be fair, much of the scepticism surrounding the port, at least here on GAF, was met with, "Come on, be reasonable: it couldn't possibly be that bad!"
 
From the manual:

"disconnected from the online session"


Yeah it kicks you to the menu screen for 5 seconds, then you press ok once and start it up again in offline mode exactly where you left off. Same thing happens on the console version when you lose your internet connection. Your post implied that you couldn't even play the game with a low framerate.
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
If I don't care about resolution and graphical options, will the game still be fun?

If it runs well on your rig and you like a challenging action RPG then yeah I'm pretty damn confident you will have fun with the game.

Hey guys, remember when I posted the Famitsu interview with the director, and everyone told me that it had to be a mistranslation because there's no way he's talking about locked resolution in a PC game?

Lol.

Remember when you banned me in the first big PC dark souls thread?

I remember ;_;
 

duckroll

Member
Hey guys, remember when I posted the Famitsu interview with the director, and everyone told me that it had to be a mistranslation because there's no way he's talking about locked resolution in a PC game?

Lol.
 

Gattsu25

Banned
PC Gamers the biggest drama queens of them all.

1. It will be modded within weeks
2. Motion Blur will hide the majority of jaggies
3. I think you're all afraid of dying :D Capra Demon too much for yas?

What are you on about? If the below is true then all 360 and PS3 players would have been kicked to the menu after 31 seconds inside Blightown. This is WORSE than the console versions of the game (and it would have been due to GFWL alone):
From the manual:
LoW FPS FEAtuRE
To prevent latency issues and frequent disconnections, there is a
low FPS feature implemented where if your FPS drops below 15
for 30 seconds, your game will automatically be disconnected
from the online session and will return to the title screen. To avoid
this, please refer to the minimum/recommended specifi cations
to have a better confi guration.

The console versions barely scraped by at 9fps (or lower) during that area of the game (and the area below it), why would they add a limitation like that to the PC version?
 
Don't really care about the texture lock, the game still is >720p. The frame-rate issue won't bother me much either. A stable 30 is worth it, and if there are ini tweaks to get to 60, then it's far superior to the console versions. The covenants should actually all be functioning, and there is the matchmaking and DLC too.

But the game is rendered sub 720p and people are hinting that it doesn't achieve a steady 30fps.
 

Card Boy

Banned
Meh, my third version of the game. If you are playing Dark Souls and bitching about resolution-you have a problem. Of all things to bitch about in the game: graphics are so not even important.

I consider the PS3 and 360 versions in the top 3 games on either system. 15fps Blighttown and all.

New content, under 30 bucks, smooth framerate: why not?

mal-what.gif


If LA Noire is anything to go by dont expect 30FPS, expect under 30.
 

Kiyo

Member
I wouldn't be too certain about a steady framerate, from the RPS preview:

This from the Eurogamer article though:

To cut to the chase, the frame-rate on consoles has always been a major area of complaint among Dark Souls fans, and the notorious Blight Town or New Londo Ruins areas are usually singled out as the big offenders. The implication of a PC release is obviously that all these problems can be tackled by the brute force of a faster CPU, and though there are very light hitches here and there, it's a relief to say Blight Town now plays without all the constant chugging. The improvement is staggering to those that endured the treacle-like pace of the area on PS3 and 360, already making this version a winning proposition.
 
This was the first gfwl game I was willing to buy in years, but I assumed that I could at least run it at 60fps in my monitor's native resolution. Guess I'm going to pass. Just pathetic.
 

LegatoB

Member
Don't really care about the texture lock, the game still is >720p. The frame-rate issue won't bother me much either. A stable 30 is worth it, and if there are ini tweaks to get to 60, then it's far superior to the console versions. The covenants should actually all be functioning, and there is the matchmaking and DLC too.
Did you not read the part where it was explained that the game is locked at 1024x720? That's sub 720p.

Thank the sweet Valve-lords that my attempt to pre-order this game the other day was foiled by Steam errors. Let some other fool pay for this incompetent mess.
 
Dark Souls System Requirements:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0 Ghz or AMD Phenom II X2 545 3.0 Ghz
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Disk Space: 4 GB
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 4870 - GeForce 9800 GTX+
DirectX®: 9.0c

Battlefield 3 System Requirements:
Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core (Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or Athlon X2 2.7 GHz)
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics card (AMD): DirectX 10.1 compatible with 512 MB RAM (ATI Radeon 3000, 4000, 5000 or 6000 series, with ATI Radeon 3870 or higher performance)
Graphics card (NVIDIA): DirectX 10.0 compatible with 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 or 500 series with NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or higher performance)

The Witcher 2 System Requirements:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+
Memory: 1 GB for Windows XP / 2 GB for Windows Vista and Windows 7
Hard disk space: 20 GB of disc space
Video: 512 MB RAM supporting Pixel Shader 3.0 (Nvidia GF 8800 or ATI Radeon HD3850)

Who the hell uses DX9 in this day and age? I'll wait for the community to fix this mess. Steam Christmas Sale 2012, it is.
 

aeolist

Banned
"disconnected from the online session"


Yeah it kicks you to the menu screen for 5 seconds, then you press ok once and start it up again in offline mode exactly where you left off. Same thing happens on the console version when you lose your internet connection. Your post implied that you couldn't even play the game with a low framerate.

That's not what the manual says though. If that's how it works then OK, but it sure looks to me like it kicks you back to the title screen.
 

Narag

Member
To be fair, much of the scepticism surrounding the port, at least here on GAF, was met with, "Come on, be reasonable: it couldn't possibly be that bad!"

Sounds like a future Steam sale purchase for.me barring acceptable fixes are put into place whether from the devs or the community.
 

boinx

Member
Why don't you guys just keep playing this on consoles, i mean we all know this wasn't gonna turn out as anything good right?
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
That's not what the manual says though. If that's how it works then OK, but it sure looks to me like it kicks you back to the title screen.

That's probably how it works. I remember getting disconnected on the console version a few times and getting kicked back to the title screen.

I have to say if you're really unsure of whether this game will run well on your rig or not you're probably better off playing it on the console if you have one. Even with the blight town FPS garbage (small part of the game), it's still very worth playing.

I'm sorry. I don't remember any of it. For you, that day was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday.

It was an important day. I was kind of trying to get banned on purpose, and then getting banned made me realize how stupid I was. Not being able to post on GAF (Granted, I do post too much...) sucked.
 

Lafiel

と呼ぶがよい
If I don't care about resolution and graphical options, will the game still be fun?
Yes. Honestly the worst part about the news, is so many people are going miss out on one of the best games of the generation - shitty port or not. I'd hope most PC-exclusive people here buy it for $5-10 during a steam sale or something.
 

anddo0

Member
Wow port looks worse than Prototype.



I have canceled acouple Steamworks pre-orders from GMG before. If you havent recieved your key and the game isnt out youre 100% entitled to a refund. If you received a key then i'm afraid youre chances are slim.

Submitted a request.

I bought a gaming laptop for 1080p/60fps. If DS is sub-720p I'm not getting anywhere near it until it hits bomba prices. I've logged well over 300 hours into the game. I just wanted to play it at a higher res, and smoother frames.
 
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