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

Raven77

Raven77

Member
Wigglers said:
You know a game is poorly optimized as shit when modders make it run better on PC than the devs did with an SDK.
Click to expand...

You haven't been around PC gaming much have you...:)


This is basically always the case with any game that can be modded. Watch Dogs definitely looks better modded but it still isn't hitting 2012 levels.
 
W

Wigglers

Neo Member
Raven77 said:
You haven't been around PC gaming much have you...:)


This is basically always the case with any game that can be modded. Watch Dogs definitely looks better modded but it still isn't hitting 2012 levels.
Click to expand...

I'm actually a pure PC gamer, so I definitely know it... If it isn't early access (read: dev team rip off) poor optimization, Garbage tier console ports or no pc port at all. I'm getting the shortest end of the stick possible these days. Luckily the PC community sticks together and has been coming up with this stuff for ages. Sure it isn't hitting 2012 levels or for that matter the fact that the trailer featured spider tank which is just a damn MINIGAME but at least we're getting somewhere. As well as catching Ubisoft with their pants down again is pretty satisfying.
 
R

Rnr1224

Member
played around with the settings more and even with the mod, im getting 30 fps on medium. disappointing but hopefully more patches or mods will come out to improve the performance.
 
X

xXBaconXx

Banned
jim2point0 said:
Holy LODbias. I havent bothered with Maldo's tweaks because my game runs fine but... whoa.

I wonder how that would look with absurd downsampling though. Hmmmm.
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That isn't how it's supposed to look. It's just a test version that Maldo made to see if his idea would actually work.
 
H

hellboy69

Neo Member
Mister D said:
So I installed the mod and ran through the intro mission and a little bit of the area by your starting motel with FRAPS running and saw pretty significant improvements in performance. However, for the life of me, I can't get this piece of shit game to open in fullscreen and stay that way. I've checked my gamerprofile.xml file and confirmed that it's set to 2 for windowed mode including setting the file to read-only but it just will not display in fullscreen.

I can change it to borderless window mode after starting but fuck doing that every time I want to play. If no one has a way to fix this I think I'm just gonna can this game, chalk up the $60 as a loss and go back to playing Infamous. Maybe Ubisoft will get around to fixing this crap but I'm done scouring the internet trying to find a fix when I should be having fun playing the damn game.
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try running the .exe as an administrator
 
B

Betta Lines

Member
Mister D said:
So I installed the mod and ran through the intro mission and a little bit of the area by your starting motel with FRAPS running and saw pretty significant improvements in performance. However, for the life of me, I can't get this piece of shit game to open in fullscreen and stay that way. I've checked my gamerprofile.xml file and confirmed that it's set to 2 for windowed mode including setting the file to read-only but it just will not display in fullscreen.

I can change it to borderless window mode after starting but fuck doing that every time I want to play. If no one has a way to fix this I think I'm just gonna can this game, chalk up the $60 as a loss and go back to playing Infamous. Maybe Ubisoft will get around to fixing this crap but I'm done scouring the internet trying to find a fix when I should be having fun playing the damn game.
Click to expand...
I assume you've tried Alt+Enter?
 
W

Wigglers

Neo Member
Hawkian said:
could I trouble you to clarify this point a little bit?
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the spider tank isn't in any way related to the campaign or vital to the gameplay what so ever. it's just a minigame you can play to waste time and do score attacking which ubisoft exploited in the trailer to make the game look more exciting.
 
R

Relix

he's Virgin Tight™
Any Ultra texture fix? I have a 2GB 670GTX so I kinda am holding out for the "stuterring" to disappear. I honestly don't know how bad it is but I hate that and tearing in games so yeah. I'd upgrade my GPU but I'll hold out for NVidia's next GPU line to be a worthy upgrade.
 
J

jim2point0

Banned
This mod really screws with indoor lighting. I'm on a mission now where I have to go indoors. If I sit just outside, I can see in just fine. But as soon as I cross the door way, the room becomes completely black.

If I remove the mod, it's fine. But... ugh :(

Hopefully that can be fixed.
 
F

flipswitch

Member
Has the official UBI soft patch for PC came out yet? I thought it was released and the stuttering is still there, but now I'm reading it's coming out soon.
 
H

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
jim2point0 said:
This mod really screws with indoor lighting. I'm on a mission now where I have to go indoors. If I sit just outside, I can see in just fine. But as soon as I cross the door way, the room becomes completely black.

If I remove the mod, it's fine. But... ugh :(

Hopefully that can be fixed.
Click to expand...
This just happened to me too, Definitely a big issue and anyone who thinks that TheWorse is just flipping some switches and everything magically looks better so why didn't Ubisoft just include these options to begin with blah blah blah are not getting how much of a work in progress this is.
 
S

scitek

Member
flipswitch said:
Has the official UBI soft patch for PC came out yet? I thought it was released and the stuttering is still there, but now I'm reading it's coming out soon.
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It came out yesterday. It didn't seem to fix anything for me, but I admit I reverted back to the mod after only running it for a few minutes a single time.
 
C

Confidence Man

Member
Hawkian said:
This just happened to me too, Definitely a big issue and anyone who thinks that TheWorse is just flipping some switches and everything magically looks better so why didn't Ubisoft just include these options to begin with blah blah blah are not getting how much of a work in progress this is.
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Well he does other things that are more a matter of taste than improvement like mess with fog and time of day, who knows what else he fooled around with. He should've stuck with the couple of genuine enhancements that he found and left all the other changes for a separate patch.
 
D

Devildoll

Member
A response from the dev team.

Watch Dogs "E3 2012" mod can have damaging effect on gameplay, says Ubisoft - PC Gamer.com


The dev team is completely dedicated to getting the most out of each platform, so the notion that we would actively downgrade quality is contrary to everything we’ve set out to achieve. We test and optimize our games for each platform on which they’re released, striving for the best possible quality. The PC version does indeed contain some old, unused render settings that were deactivated for a variety of reasons, including possible impacts on visual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality. Modders are usually creative and passionate players, and while we appreciate their enthusiasm, the mod in question (which uses those old settings) subjectively enhances the game’s visual fidelity in certain situations but also can have various negative impacts. Those could range from performance issues, to difficulty in reading the environment in order to appreciate the gameplay, to potentially making the game less enjoyable or even unstable.

Thanks for playing Watch Dogs and stay safe on the mean streets of Chicago.

-The Watch Dogs Team
Click to expand...
 
T

TheHollowNight

Member
Daggerborn13 said:
Bet he still doesn't have a reflection......
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I already mentioned why that won't be possible earlier in the thread

TheHollowNight said:
I very much doubt it. Watch Dogs' engine uses deferred rendering, Which typically has issues with transparency/reflections/alpha. It would require a huge amount of effort and resource time to switch all cubemap reflections into screen space ones.

In fact I can't think of any game of recent memory that applies real time reflections to every potential reflective surface. It's definitely not a small fix, even though it's perceived to be. Old engines using forward rendering could do this stuff easily, but most developers starting switching to deferred or a hybrid variant of deferred because it allows for vast amounts of dynamic lights/shadows and very scalable.
Click to expand...
 
N

nOoblet16

Member
TheHollowNight said:
I very much doubt it. Watch Dogs' engine uses deferred rendering, Which typically has issues with transparency/reflections/alpha. It would require a huge amount of effort and resource time to switch all cubemap reflections into screen space ones.

In fact I can't think of any game of recent memory that applies real time reflections to every potential reflective surface. It's definitely not a small fix, even though it's perceived to be. Old engines using forward rendering could do this stuff easily, but most developers starting switching to deferred or a hybrid variant of deferred because it allows for vast amounts of dynamic lights/shadows and very scalable.
Click to expand...

I think you might already know this but having SSR for everything is a bad idea and that's why no game uses it, it's not that resource intensive by the way. The reason why it's a bad idea is simply because it cannot render what's offscreen (or near the edges of the screen and hence it's only good for reflecting signs, lights and objects that are directly adjacent to the reflective surface and even then when it comes to large objects such as a building half of it will disappear because it's not on screen and give you an inaccurate reflection, this is why Infamous and Killzone Shadowfall used a mixture of both to provide as accurate looking reflection as possible.

More on it here
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Bart...609/The_future_of_screenspace_reflections.php
 
T

TopHat

Neo Member
I'm almost certain the official patch for PC has not released yet. I believe we got a small pre-patch and most are assuming it is the official one. There seems to be a load of confusion out there over this. It seems most people are assuming that we got the patch even though it seemingly did nothing except add a version number to the main menu.

Also, it was stated that the PC patch was to be released in "the coming days". Wasn't that, like, yesterday?
 
S

scitek

Member
TopHat said:
I'm almost certain the official patch for PC has not released yet. I believe we got a small pre-patch and most are assuming it is the official one. There seems to be a load of confusion out there over this. It seems most people are assuming that we got the patch even though it seemingly did nothing except add a version number to the main menu.

Also, it was stated that the PC patch was to be released in "the coming days". Wasn't that, like, yesterday?
Click to expand...

Well, I certainly got A patch yesterday, and it prompted me on Uplay to download a patch, so I'd call it a patch.
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
SniperHunter said:
doesn't look good as the e3 2012 video to me...

but I will buy the pc version down the road and check it out myself



amazing motion blur in this one! Very high quality! Is this part of the mod as well?
Click to expand...

I'm not using the mod anymore/yet/for those clips.
The txaa aa/blur really is awesome, makes it look like a movie and luckily I'm able to play pretty smoothly with it too (hardlocked 30 or 50 with drops to 40-45).

TopHat said:
I'm almost certain the official patch for PC has not released yet. I believe we got a small pre-patch and most are assuming it is the official one. There seems to be a load of confusion out there over this. It seems most people are assuming that we got the patch even though it seemingly did nothing except add a version number to the main menu.

Also, it was stated that the PC patch was to be released in "the coming days". Wasn't that, like, yesterday?
Click to expand...

They said later it was expected yesterday or today and one of the patch notes was a version change. It added the .dat files people were using to mod the game as well. I want to believe but not sure why people are positive.
 
D

Daggerborn13

Banned
TheHollowNight said:
I very much doubt it. Watch Dogs' engine uses deferred rendering, Which typically has issues with transparency/reflections/alpha. It would require a huge amount of effort and resource time to switch all cubemap reflections into screen space ones.

In fact I can't think of any game of recent memory that applies real time reflections to every potential reflective surface. It's definitely not a small fix, even though it's perceived to be. Old engines using forward rendering could do this stuff easily, but most developers starting switching to deferred or a hybrid variant of deferred because it allows for vast amounts of dynamic lights/shadows and very scalable.
Click to expand...

You'd think they wouldn't use so many reflective surfaces if that's the case. Overall, Ubisoft hasn't exactly shown the best judgment in regards to this game though.
 
S

Setsuna

Member
Daggerborn13 said:
You'd think they wouldn't use so many reflective surfaces if that's the case. Overall, Ubisoft hasn't exactly shown the best judgment in regards to this game though.
Click to expand...

Its a video game and like all video games NEVER look to close you will always ruin your initial impression that the game looks as good as it does
 
H

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Daggerborn13 said:
You'd think they wouldn't use so many reflective surfaces if that's the case.
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I mean, it's set in a city
KuGsj.gif
 
M

Milincho

Banned
Unbelievable... it seems UBI are breaking the roof of shame already.

http://whatifgaming.com/the-division-developer-insider-we-already-downgraded-a-few-things

"UPDATED 2nd Response from The Division Developer: Truth be told in regards to your question that while ‘Yes’ the lead platform is the PC, we simply cannot have such a big gap. As you know when the first WATCH DOGS Review was published by that one site, Ubisoft called it a “false review” and I am sure everyone can see how bad that sounded when they saw the game did look marginally better than something that was a last generation GTA IV. But no, they will not admit that they practice this or actively downgrade a game. It is much easier to say they removed things for stability which is often a lie as you can tell by the post-issues which are expected in any production we do."
 
BONKERS

BONKERS

Member
SapientWolf said:
PC monitors don't have the same kind of video options that HDTVs do. Thus, SweetFX. You're literally saying that you don't like having more image adjustment options.
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High quality, high end PC monitors usually do.

Often time people end up marring and making games look hilariously bad with SweetFX because they don't know what the heck they are doing.


Also:

We really loved the reception to the demo we showed on the PC version at E3. Currently as it stands, there is definitely a lot of push coming from publishers to not make the experience so different on consoles as to alienate people into thinking that next generation is not as powerful as PC. This is probably what happened at Ubisoft Montreal. I think that while making stability changes is definitely important, it does not completely obliterate a lot of enhanced rendering applications.

Right now we already took out quite a lot of screen space reflections from the game and are working on asset management the best we can given consoles have that great unified memory. Naturally we will also be using online servers and have to produce a synchronization that higher graphics add to the latency so it had to be turned down. To me it still looks good, but not as good as the original reveal. I am sure as we get closer to launch and the actual console versions of the game featuring SD (Snowdrop) that it will start to seem all too obvious to people especially those on PCs. I just wanted to write and let you know that it definitely is not just stability but marketing politics plays into this a lot as well.

UPDATED 2nd Response from The Division Developer: Truth be told in regards to your question that while ‘Yes’ the lead platform is the PC, we simply cannot have such a big gap. As you know when the first WATCH DOGS Review was published by that one site, Ubisoft called it a “false review” and I am sure everyone can see how bad that sounded when they saw the game did look marginally better than something that was a last generation GTA IV. But no, they will not admit that they practice this or actively downgrade a game. It is much easier to say they removed things for stability which is often a lie as you can tell by the post-issues which are expected in any production we do.

Also to answer your 3rd question, no…they will never fully disclose what was removed from what build as no laws ask them to do so in terms of consumer rights. If we as developers published that information in very real terms for the consumer such as “Replaced particle fog simulation with 2d layer simulation in 3d space, removed particles from all explosions, lowered explosion volume multiplier by 20x, removed X # of trees and civilians, etc.” we would be out of a lot of sales and probably it would actually require too much time to deliver on the current hype that a lot of downgraded games see which look incredible with a vertical slice. I do share this in the hope’s that my colleagues and publishers and a lot of people who make false promises and do demonstrations which wrongfully create too much hype that they cannot deliver on ultimately stop doing such things. I want to see the industry actually move forward and not be so full of itself by promising too much and delivering too little. Regards
Click to expand...

http://whatifgaming.com/the-division-developer-insider-we-already-downgraded-a-few-things


I'm glad I NEVER pay full price or pre-order anything from Ubisoft. Bunch of hacks who treat PC gamers (DRM, layering DRM on top of DRM when you buy games on Steam)like criminals and 2nd class citizens and are too afraid to really put it out there that consoles aren't and won't ever be on par with PCs for the forseeable future.

I dont' get it , if ANYTHING it would make people want to build a PC instead and buy the game on PC. Are they just fucking retarded or something?
 
1

1.21Gigawatts

Banned
Milincho said:
Unbelievable... it seems UBI are breaking the roof of shame already.

http://whatifgaming.com/the-division-developer-insider-we-already-downgraded-a-few-things
Click to expand...

BONKERS said:
Also:



http://whatifgaming.com/the-division-developer-insider-we-already-downgraded-a-few-things
Click to expand...


Tales from ass made into article, still tales from ass.

Massive just confirmed a few weeks ago that Ps4 is lead plattform and will stay lead plattform when rumors spread that Microsoft paid money to make XboxOne lead plattform.
 
M

_machine

Member
Milincho said:
Unbelievable... it seems UBI are breaking the roof of shame already.

http://whatifgaming.com/the-division-developer-insider-we-already-downgraded-a-few-things

"UPDATED 2nd Response from The Division Developer: Truth be told in regards to your question that while ‘Yes’ the lead platform is the PC, we simply cannot have such a big gap. As you know when the first WATCH DOGS Review was published by that one site, Ubisoft called it a “false review” and I am sure everyone can see how bad that sounded when they saw the game did look marginally better than something that was a last generation GTA IV. But no, they will not admit that they practice this or actively downgrade a game. It is much easier to say they removed things for stability which is often a lie as you can tell by the post-issues which are expected in any production we do."
Click to expand...
Eh, that site looks really questionable, just the front page is filled with Watch Dogs articles and the post by the developer is off with quotes like graphics affect internet synchronization or whatever. Massive has also shown a bit of their tools at Nordic Game 2014 and for example the door closing animation was an actual feature in the engine that can be toggled for all door props (the question in the end will be how many different types of interaction animations there will be) so it was not just something scripted for the demos. So I'm quite confident it'll look quite the same as the E3 this year, but it's still under development so some changes are to be expected.
 
Y

Yasae

Banned
Yeah those statements were unconfirmed. I'm far more inclined to believe Stump's explanation anyway:
Stumpokapow said:
Hypothesis A: Ubisoft deliberately gimped the PC version because they got cartoon live-free-for-life cheques from publisher's clearinghouse and sony and microsoft

Hypothesis B: Once Ubisoft knew that they had to cut a lot of those elements from the four main platforms in order to achieve acceptable performance, they didn't spend any further resources refining, testing, or planning for those effects in the PC version, including by implementing settings sliders to impact them. As usual, residual left-over files not used in the install made their way into the final game. That they appear to be ready for primetime does not mean that Ubisoft wanted to invest the effort in doing final testing or anything like that.

It is true, both are possible. But I think the more likely reason is that they don't give a shit.
Click to expand...

Stumpokapow said:
As I said in the last thread on the subject of secret conspiracies, it was clear from day one that the cause here was neglect--the PC version of this game is at most the fifth or sixth most important SKU. It's not about deliberately worsening the product, it's about neglecting to invest resources to improve the product. They developed with a certain baseline level of effects, they toned them down to improve performance on the console SKUs, and then they chose not to finish development and testing and refining on what they already done. And as is normally the case, the final build contains cut or unused content. Many games even have playable, very near completion cut content. It happens.

The deception here is that they somehow got from "This is PC only, who cares" to "the dev team is completely dedicated to getting the most out of the platform". I am sure the dev team did their best given the resources and time constraints and the organizational nightmare of working on a game made by 8749 people across 271 teams in 181 countries. But it's pretty clear that knocking the PC version out of the park was not their priority. It's okay, but it's also something people should be aware of before purchasing.

I do think patching out something that was only accessible through a mod is pretty poor form. 99% of the players wouldn't have touched it and the 1% who would have would have done so with the understanding that if stuff broke, it was the mod, not the game.
Click to expand...
 
BONKERS

BONKERS

Member
1.21Gigawatts said:
Tales from ass made into article, still tales from ass.

Massive just confirmed a few weeks ago that Ps4 is lead plattform and will stay lead plattform when rumors spread that Microsoft paid money to make XboxOne lead plattform.
Click to expand...

People are forced to spout corporate spoon fed crap all the time.

PS4 being the lead platform just says that it gives them excuse for the downgrade from original reveal. "Oh well we were originally showing on PC, after that we shifted development to PS4 lead platform!"


And with Watch Dogs, it's obvious once they had to tailor in for the 360 and PS3 and that the PS4 wasn't as powerful as they thought. Who cares about PC?

PC gamers don't make them mega millions even though tons of people still buy their games on PC and only play them on PC.

Even when they release them unfinished, riddled with Uplay over Steam and unoptimized
 
BONKERS

BONKERS

Member
Hawkian said:
Mind clarifying a little further than that? What do expected post-release problems have to do with cut aspects being removed for performance or technical reasons?
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He mentioned stability in reference to Ubisoft's official response about the removed effects.
 
A

AmyS

Member
I am so fucking ashamed that Ubisoft has made such a clusterfuck of the video game of my real-life home town city :(
 
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