• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

13 Ways To End Lousy PC Ports in 2023-DF video

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
The idea that DF who are not developers are trying to tell developers how not to make poor PC ports is exactly the kind of towering hubris that turns me off from DF.

By all means, opine on whether dynamic resolution scaling is being used in a game or not based on your analysis. But STFU trying to tell devs (who know far more than you) how to do their jobs.
A lot of them are shit at their jobs so we should just shut up and thank them for blessing us with crappy ports? Should no one say anything about the shoddy quality and offer suggestions?

Shit take.
 
A lot of them are shit at their jobs so we should just shut up and thank them for blessing us with crappy ports? Should no one say anything about the shoddy quality and offer suggestions?

Shit take.

Spoken like an arrogant fool who understands nothing of game development.

Just because you know how to fiddle with a few settings in an ini file, doesn't qualify you to be able to assess who and which games developers are competent at their jobs.... WTF?!?

Dunning-Kruger is one hell of a drug!!

Are you gonna claim that CD Project RED who made the Witcher 3 are incompetent devs because Cyberpunk 2077 shipped in a shitty bug-infested state? It's well documented that the issue was a lack of time to complete development on the game.

Pull your head out of your arse!
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Way number 14?
Get a console, have fun with life again, play games day1
Put Dualsense in your butt

Dj Khaled Dance GIF
Dj Khaled Studio GIF by VH1
 

Denton

Member
The idea that DF who are not developers are trying to tell developers how not to make poor PC ports is exactly the kind of towering hubris that turns me off from DF.

By all means, opine on whether dynamic resolution scaling is being used in a game or not based on your analysis. But STFU trying to tell devs (who know far more than you) how to do their jobs.
What a moronic post.

Alex has put together a pretty good list of things to do and problems to avoid to help developers avoid getting terrible marketing and word of mouth at launch due to terrible PC versions. There is precisely nothing wrong with that. If anyone's ego is hurt by it, they need to get their head checked out.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
What a moronic post.

Alex has put together a pretty good list of things to do and problems to avoid to help developers avoid getting terrible marketing and word of mouth at launch due to terrible PC versions. There is precisely nothing wrong with that. If anyone's ego is hurt by it, they need to get their head checked out.
exactly. I want all games to have "default" button on every settings page... games that don't have it, discourage me from experimentin sometimes.
And I hate sliders without numbers. Fucking tell me what the setting is. Sliders are bad
 

Wildebeest

Member
Not having to push one button to cycle between 50 screen modes just to get to your desktop resolution. Not having to use graphic driver overrides to force v-synch and buffering to fix horrible screen tearing.

Dream the impossible dream.
 

MikeM

Member
Proceeds to use examples from PlayStation exclusives, kind of funny that PS PC ports are examples to follow for PC ports. Also he says include a console quality on PC like God of War, then says normally when he optimizes PC game settings they are usually pretty close to console versions. Just get a console already and avoid all of these pitfalls.
Its the reason why I keep my PS5 alongside my monster PC.
I do wish devs listed a console settings mode though for those who like them but want to blast past the framerate barriers.
Don't understand this attitude. PC gaming is facing a lot of challenges lately leading to a bunch of technically hamstrung releases. Clearly the state of PC games are not where it should be. Everyone with a ounce of clout SHOULD be calling these issues out. It is absolutely needed for PC gaming to get back on track.
This will continue until people learn to stop preordering.
 

Fbh

Member
Aside from the shader stuff most of these just seem like menu tweaks which I guess are nice but generally don't have a big impact on my enjoyment of the game.
"Oh no I had to click once more to access the graphics setting, my day is ruined".

At the rate things are going, I'm starting to worry about console versions as well. Once upon a time, you could buy them feeling safe that they would be polished but even Elden Ring ran like shit on consoles and the best way to play for the first week was the PS4 version running on PS5. Xbox version was terrible and I had to postpone my PC playthrough until they released a patch a week after release that diminished the massive stutters.

What?
The tech at FROM has sucked for a long time. If anything even with all the issues Elden Ring was probably their best performing console release in over a decade. 45-60fps, specially with VRR, is still a lot nicer than 30fps with bad frame pacing or 30-40fps unlocked framerate.
 

Senua

Member
No... you're entirely wrong.

Those devs you speak of far more likely don't have the time or resources available on a given project to test and optimize all these various configurations and settings that this DF nut is asking for.

You're making the exact same mistake as this DF goon, thinking the problem is "hurr durr, lazy devs" when the opposite is true.


What a patently absurd analogy.

Your car is either constantly breaking down because:
  • It's well over the mileage that the manufacturer guarantees performance for - in which case it's End of Life and any complaints about the design are invalid because it's got nothing to do with the design
  • Or it's a result of a manufacturing defect that your warranty would cover - in which case, again it's not the fault of the designer, rather the manufacturer, and they remedy this with your warranty.
So by your own logic, you have no valid criticisms of the car designer.

In the case of PC ports of video games. DF goons shouldn't be trying to tell devs what to do when they have no concept of what is causing the issues seen in current PC ports in the first place. DF may have some knowledge of the technical solutions, but knowing what the technical solution is, is a very different thing from knowing the practical feasibility of implementing a technical solution. In the real world, when working on real game projects, to real project deadlines, the latter aspect, i.e. knowing the practical feasibility of implementing a technical solution, is infinitely more important than the former.
nah, you're just simping for devs and excusing them for constantly churning out lack lustre PC ports which (if you're lucky) get fixed later on. the shader stutter struggle is very very real, but silly sausages like you will carry on defending. i paid good money for your product i don't want it to fucking stutter everywhere, do your job you fucks. your post is very resetera esque too it gives me fun memories!

your guys hate boner for alex/DF has deluded you into defending shitty practises, you are sullied my children, sullied i say!

kZtNHZU.png
 
Last edited:

Kataploom

Gold Member
The idea that DF who are not developers are trying to tell developers how not to make poor PC ports is exactly the kind of towering hubris that turns me off from DF.

By all means, opine on whether dynamic resolution scaling is being used in a game or not based on your analysis. But STFU trying to tell devs (who know far more than you) how to do their jobs.
They're talking from the point of view of a consumer and not a dev though, they're not telling devs how they should code or design their games, they're saying what we like and don't as costumers from PC versions and I think they nailed it
 

Kenpachii

Member
5d859461d0132c4d1f1469c08b909f9b.jpg




1) shader complication stutter = basically broken game, shouldn't even needed to be mentioned.
2) nobody cares
3) nobody cares
4) nobody cares
5) resolution should always pick your standard default refresh rate, again nobody cares
6) get a 21:9 screen, fov wut? anyway most games that need it have that option as stock so again nobody cares.
7) nobody cares.
8) vsync is useless, what year is that guy living in.
9) nobody cares about RT and the people that do will have the hardware for it anyway
10) dynamic resolution? get out of here with that shit
11) HDR nobody cares on PC
12) console settings? just press medium, that's pretty much your console settings as of now.
13) most games come with DLSS or FSR, so again kinda pointless.

Seems more like "hey i am a benchmark guy, make my life more easier".
 
Last edited:

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Spoken like an arrogant fool who understands nothing of game development.
Yet you're the one flinging insults.
Just because you know how to fiddle with a few settings in an ini file, doesn't qualify you to be able to assess who and which games developers are competent at their jobs.... WTF?!?
Use that peanut inside your skull for once. If a game runs like shit, crashes, is full of glitches and bugs, do I need to be a dev to know the job is shit? Do I need to be a game dev to know that Cyberpunk was shit and that it was a show of incompetence (mainly form the publisher in this case)?
Dunning-Kruger is one hell of a drug!!

Are you gonna claim that CD Project RED who made the Witcher 3 are incompetent devs because Cyberpunk 2077 shipped in a shitty bug-infested state? It's well documented that the issue was a lack of time to complete development on the game.
From a technical standpoint? CD Projekt Red is indeed shit. The Witcher 3 was crap on launch and took months to fix. Cyberpunk was a disaster and took months to fix. The Witcher 3 Complete Edition is another shitshow. Yeah, they're incompetent when it comes to tech because their stuff runs terribly. I don't need to be a game dev for that. I just need a pair of functioning eyes to know what I'm looking at.

People who don't do the job can't critique. What a moronic post.
Pull your head out of your arse!
Yours is so far in that they fused together.
 
Last edited:

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
What a moronic post.

Alex has put together a pretty good list of things to do and problems to avoid to help developers avoid getting terrible marketing and word of mouth at launch due to terrible PC versions. There is precisely nothing wrong with that. If anyone's ego is hurt by it, they need to get their head checked out.
This. The dude starts insulting people when he has the most ridiculous post in this thread so far.

What's next, you've never been a president so you can't criticize the one sitting in office?
 

skneogaf

Member
I imagine quite a lot of developers aren't actually aware of the issues mentioned are even a problem.

The Sony games that have come to pc have some of the best options to adjust.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
There are many reasons why video games, and by extension software projects in general, launch with performance issues and bugs. In the majority of cases, it has everything to do with time and resource constraints and nothing to do with a lack of competence on the part of the professional software developer.
There is no excuse for real time shader compilation that has significant stutters. You do pre compilation like tons of games do. Even freaking free emulators have almost no stutters (CEMU) with its async shader compilation.
 

nkarafo

Member
It's amazing to me how some devs released their games with the shader stuttering problem. Basically, your game has this glaring technical issue that affects 100% of players and it's so intense that pretty much ruins it for everyone, yet you still release it in that state. And not only that, some don't even fix it later on via patch. Did Stray ever got fixed? How about Scorn?
 

Fake

Member
I don't get it, criticizing someone's work online is somehow frowned upon now? I mean 90% of GAF posts are about shitting on devs and their games.

Are you really comparing GAF behavior to a guy that make this a way of earn money?

Thats your first problem. We just do most of this for fun, but pretty much most of the people here know that dev work is not easy.
 
What a moronic post.

Alex has put together a pretty good list of things to do and problems to avoid to help developers avoid getting terrible marketing and word of mouth at launch due to terrible PC versions. There is precisely nothing wrong with that. If anyone's ego is hurt by it, they need to get their head checked out.

exactly. I want all games to have "default" button on every settings page... games that don't have it, discourage me from experimentin sometimes.
And I hate sliders without numbers. Fucking tell me what the setting is. Sliders are bad

nah, you're just simping for devs and excusing them for constantly churning out lack lustre PC ports which (if you're lucky) get fixed later on. the shader stutter struggle is very very real, but silly sausages like you will carry on defending. i paid good money for your product i don't want it to fucking stutter everywhere, do your job you fucks. your post is very resetera esque too it gives me fun memories!

your guys hate boner for alex/DF has deluded you into defending shitty practises, you are sullied my children, sullied i say!

kZtNHZU.png

They're talking from the point of view of a consumer and not a dev though, they're not telling devs how they should code or design their games, they're saying what we like and don't as costumers from PC versions and I think they nailed it

Naaah...

Alex's wish list is the equivalent of shouting at devs "make your games better".

It's a fucking worthless complaint that ignores completely the reason why the games that ship with issues on PC actually do so.

You can choose to be myopic adolescents who only care about your own selfish desires, or you can be more pragmatic and recognize that there are reasons other than developer competence as to why devs aren't implementing your every fucking unrealistic gamer wishlist into every one of their games.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Naaah...

Alex's wish list is the equivalent of shouting at devs "make your games better".

It's a fucking worthless complaint that ignores completely the reason why the games that ship with issues on PC actually do so.

You can choose to be myopic adolescents who only care about your own selfish desires, or you can be more pragmatic and recognize that there are reasons other than developer competence as to why devs aren't implementing your every fucking unrealistic gamer wishlist into every one of their games.
I never called incompetence in developers but ok buddy, you must know more I guess
 

ZehDon

Gold Member
Right. Tell me you're out of touch without saying you're out of touch.

A massive chunk of this isn't because developers forgot or were unaware, or even had their priorities in the wrong order. It's for external factors or resource limitations that render each unobtainable. Shader Compilation Stutter, for example, is often times driven by the middleware engine the studio has to work with and is simply outside of their control. Hell, Epic struggle with shader comp issues on their own engine. Other options, like FOV and Aspect Ratios, require fundamental decisions that may simply be out of budget. Accommodating for ultra-wide resolutions, for example, isn't as simple as just adding it to a drop down. It can literally require significant changes to render culling code, destroying carefully made optimisation work in the process. Each quality level for graphical options also has to be implemented and tested. It's not just a "do thing at less quality", it's literally an entirely new code path or asset designed to have less impact on performance. The dynamic resolution work on console may also be using console specific API calls, such as Sony's checkerboard rendering feature for the PS4 Pro, which may have no clear analogue in the PC space. This would require a large amount of entirely new work to be done for exactly the same feature - a feature that PC users aren't screaming for. Image reconstruction techniques are often tied to marketing deals, such as the case with The Calisto Protocol, where DLSS isn't implemented because AMD paid to have the game push FSR.

While it would be nice for all games to support all features, this type of wish list makes me think less of the person who constructed it.
 
Last edited:

Braag

Member
Are you really comparing GAF behavior to a guy that make this a way of earn money?

Thats your first problem. We just do most of this for fun, but pretty much most of the people here know that dev work is not easy.

Exactly, he earns his way by analysing game visuals on a technical level, for him to ask devs to put effort into making better quality PC ports from say an IGN reviewer who doesn't like a gameplay aspects of a certain game and tells them to improve on it in a sequel is not exactly different.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Alex: "Put as much effort into your PC ports as the Spider-Man port did."

GAF: "How dare you!"

I really don't understand some reactions around here over this. You don't need to be a port house or a developer to point out areas of improvement / fuckups.

Looking at the responses here and then looking up the video, it's a very reasonable list.

Want one obvious indication that a dev porthouse is doing a SHIT job? When you don't provide ultrawide support but a fucking guy finds the hex code to change in your game to support it almost flawlessly. That's a fucking shit job, like bare minimum of effort, like a bunch of coding monkeys with no fucking life left in them to find exciting features to add. No i do not need to go to university and start a port studio to understand how shit you are at porting, literally a dude with no game development background is changing almost always the same hex registry to support ultrawide for your lazy ass.

Same for stutter and the whole list Alex gave

In fact, i wish Alex would even bring Epic games and Microsoft DX12 engineers into this discussion directly to start a conversation on best practices and maybe even lock this the precompilation down to the start of the game or during loading to not leave it to these brain dead port coders.

Kudos to Sony. Had a rough initial coming, but the studios listened to the complaints and were rapidly patching. God of War in particular, stellar support.
 
Last edited:

Hugare

Member
I usualy enjoy DF content, but this is just cringe

Of course developers know how a perfect port should be. But due to budget, time constrains and limited time they can't deliver. Or the lack of technical expertise, of course.

It's like saying "look how id can make Doom look amazing at 60 FPS? Yeah, do that". It's not as simple.

Embarassing video

EDIT: And of course, not even ONE person on Resetera are pointing out how ridiculous the video is. Because Alex posts there, so they are too affraid to say anything about it.

Thank God that we dont have people from the industry here anymore so we dont have this kind of atitude around here
 
Last edited:

Jaybe

Member
Devs need to take a cue from Rockstar, the best in the biz, and release the console versions first with their fixed specs and then put the effort into a high quality well-tested PC release.
 
I usualy enjoy DF content, but this is just cringe

Of course developers know how a perfect port should be. But due to budget, time constrains and limited time they can't deliver. Or the lack of technical expertise, of course.

It's like saying "look how id can make Doom look amazing at 60 FPS? Yeah, do that". It's not as simple.

Embarassing video

EDIT: And of course, not even ONE person on Resetera are pointing out how ridiculous the video is. Because Alex posts there, so they are too affraid to say anything about it.

Thank God that we dont have people from the industry here anymore so we dont have this kind of atitude around here
Some things need to be made clear:
As a consumer it's not our problem that Devs don't get enough budget or time. We care about the quality of the product. The list is basically a checklist of how technical quality can be achieved. And I also believe it's a mix of lack of time/budget and a certain level of dev skill gap that leads to those issues. It's upto the company management to decide where the problems are and address them, whether they lie in resource allocation or talent. This video is calling out gaming companies as a whole. It's approaching the issues from a consumers point of view. So in my book it's absolutely valid and necessary.
 

Hugare

Member
Some things need to be made clear:
As a consumer it's not our problem that Devs don't get enough budget or time. We care about the quality of the product. The list is basically a checklist of how technical quality can be achieved. And I also believe it's a mix of lack of time/budget and a certain level of dev skill gap that leads to those issues. It's upto the company management to decide where the problems are and address them, whether they lie in resource allocation or talent. This video is calling out gaming companies as a whole. It's approaching the issues from a consumers point of view. So in my book it's absolutely valid and necessary.
No, this list is not how technical quality can be achieved. Quite the contrary, actually.

This list is about complaining while offering zero insight about how the sausage is made, and why it's made that way.

There are so, so many variables that differ one project from another.

"Why not every new release nowadays have the same accessibility options as Sony 1st party releases?". They either dont have the budget, the time or the talent to deliver.

The reasons are obvious, specially to those who work in the industry. Do you think that devs dont know that their game arent that great before release?

This video reeks of "lazy devs" fallacy, but almost no one is calling it out
 
Last edited:
No, this list is not how technical quality can be achieved. Quite the contrary, actually.

This list is about complaining while offering zero insight about how the sausage is made, and why it's made that way.

There are so, so many variables that differ one project from another.

"Why not every new release nowadays have the same accessibility options as Sony 1st party releases?". They either dont have the budget, the time or the talent to deliver.

The reasons are obvious, specially to those who work in the industry. Do you think that devs dont know that their game arent that great before release?

This video reeks of "lazy devs" fallacy, but almost no one is calling it out
I'm not sure what PC games you played during the last couple of years but almost every other game that releases during the last couple of years was riddles with shader compilation stutters. And as consumers, we SHOULD be complaining about it (unless ofc one owns some shares in those publishers, then I understand trying to downplay said issues :p). As Alex mentioned the fix is to just precompile on first run or do it asynchronously. When there is such a fix available which some games have done, but others are failing to do, what else to do but to call them out? If it takes more Dev time or resources? Then it's upto the management to allocate the necessary resources! We as consumers should not have to put up with shoddy products!

Demanding a baseline quality for the products we pay for is never wrong.
 

ZehDon

Gold Member
... As Alex mentioned the fix is to just precompile on first run or do it asynchronously. When there is such a fix available which some games have done, but others are failing to do, what else to do but to call them out? If it takes more Dev time or resources? Then it's upto the management to allocate the necessary resources! We as consumers should not have to put up with shoddy products!...
Fucking wow. You should write an article for Kotaku titled "Devs: solve your shader issues with these two simple tricks (try not to GASP at number two!)".

The problem Epic - creators of the Unreal Engine - still have in their own vanguard title, Fortnite, can't be solved with pre-compilation or asynchronous compilation. This is because "do it up front" and "do it now" doesn't work all the time for all scenarios on all hardware. One of the biggest factors in PC is hardware combinations: what works wonderfully on CPU A won't on CPU B. Add in drivers, OS, and hardware versions and it becomes extremely difficult to manufacture a perfect solution for all users of all machines. Consoles don't have this issue because shaders can be pre-compiled for the specific hardware and shipped with the game itself, safe in the knowledge they work for the target platform perfectly be they JIT or pre-comp. If Alex had a complete solution, he wouldn't be making laughable YouTube videos, he'd be making millions of dollars in consulting fees from major publishers.
 
Last edited:

Kenpachii

Member
Devs need to take a cue from Rockstar, the best in the biz, and release the console versions first with their fixed specs and then put the effort into a high quality well-tested PC release.

This gotta be a joke right? there PC release was a disaster and even today it a unoptimized mess which requires a lists of settings to get the best out of the game without absolute annihilating your performance.
 
Last edited:
Fucking wow. You should write an article for Kotaku titled "Devs: solve your shader issues with these two simple tricks (try not to GASP at number two!)".

The problem Epic - creators of the Unreal Engine - still have in their own vanguard title, Fortnite, can't be solved with pre-compilation or asynchronous compilation. This is because "do it up front" and "do it now" doesn't work all the time for all scenarios on all hardware. One of the biggest factors in PC is hardware combinations: what works wonderfully on CPU A won't on CPU B. Add in drivers, OS, and hardware versions and it becomes extremely difficult to manufacture a perfect solution for all users of all machines. Consoles don't have this issue because shaders can be pre-compiled for the specific hardware and shipped with the game itself, safe in the knowledge they work for the target platform perfectly be they JIT or pre-comp. If Alex had a complete solution, he wouldn't be making laughable YouTube videos, he'd be making millions of dollars in consulting fees from major publishers.
So our attitude should be: oh that's the nature of PC gaming (lol), we have to deal with it (double lol). The unreal Devs know they have a problem with their engine. Alex has spoken with them and they understand the issue. But if the consumers dont speak up and demand more, no one is compelled to fix or even try to fix these issues. This is why speaking up by us and others with some industry recognition (like df) matters.
 

ZehDon

Gold Member
So our attitude should be: oh that's the nature of PC gaming (lol), we have to deal with it (double lol)...
Yes, that's exactly what I said: dev's can make whatever they want, and we just have to deal with it, because we're not allowed to complain about anything ever. Good job on your reading comprehension, gold star, clap clap. /s

Do you think developers aren't aware of these issues? Alex didn't list specific developers that haven't already acknowledged these problems. So, if your answer is no, then Alex's video is pointless, because the applicable Dev's already aren't listening. If the answer is yes, then Alex's video is pointless, because they're already aware of the issue. Who is Alex's video for? It's for people like you who don't understanding the complexities of why you don't have these things already.
 
Last edited:

Zathalus

Member
Man, people here are getting way to worked up over a simple suggestion video. Hell most of the things Alex suggested are not even that hard to implement. I think the hardest thing is fixing shader stutter. Implementing menus, HDR (when consoles have it) and things like FoV/Widescreen are generally easy to enable.
 

Hugare

Member
I'm not sure what PC games you played during the last couple of years but almost every other game that releases during the last couple of years was riddles with shader compilation stutters. And as consumers, we SHOULD be complaining about it (unless ofc one owns some shares in those publishers, then I understand trying to downplay said issues :p). As Alex mentioned the fix is to just precompile on first run or do it asynchronously. When there is such a fix available which some games have done, but others are failing to do, what else to do but to call them out? If it takes more Dev time or resources? Then it's upto the management to allocate the necessary resources! We as consumers should not have to put up with shoddy products!

Demanding a baseline quality for the products we pay for is never wrong.
You're aware that Fortnite has shader compilation issues, right? And Fortnite was made by Epic. Makers of Unreal Engine. And still it has problems. So I dont think that its as easy as you or Alex are implying.

My point is: making a video in order to teach developers about those issues is presumptuous as fuck when he doesnt know why games were released that way.

Is he wrong? No. But its shallow, meaningless criticism. It's as deep as those internet coaches saying "that guy was poor and now he is a millionaire, so if he did it, so can you!" throwing all the nuances out the window.
 
Top Bottom