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Batman: Arkham City PC release date now Nov 18 - Steam version uses Steamworks

Jintor

Member
Unlike my previous suggestion this seems to be a genuine fix. I haven't experienced any Rendering Thread Exception crashes since following those instructions.

Just wanted to come back and say thanks for this, same as you, no crashes at all since installing this.

Fuck man once you get the technical issues out of the way, huge and overbearing as they are, it's just re-emphasising what a fucking amazing game this is. Especially with a gamepad.
 

Bumhead

Banned
Game is totally unplayable for me now.

I reported that the game was crashing for me a couple of pages back. Well I verified all the game files, re-installed GFWL, deleted and re-installed Arkham City entirely..

The latest occurrence is that now the game crashes at the title screen (right as the bats fly across the screen after the Nvidia intro) every single time I boot it up. 100% of the time, it crashes. "Arkham City is not responding". Every. Single. Time.

This is without doubt the worst experience I've had with a PC game yet since building my rig in the summer, and I bought RAGE on Day 1. I'm stuck with a £28 game that is literally unplayable. Cannot be played.

PLEASE, does anyone suggest a possible fix? Really want to try and get this sorted. The game was working fine for me until Monday and now refuses to do anything.
 

SoulClap

Member
Game is totally unplayable for me now.

I reported that the game was crashing for me a couple of pages back. Well I verified all the game files, re-installed GFWL, deleted and re-installed Arkham City entirely..

The latest occurrence is that now the game crashes at the title screen (right as the bats fly across the screen after the Nvidia intro) every single time I boot it up. 100% of the time, it crashes. "Arkham City is not responding". Every. Single. Time.

This is without doubt the worst experience I've had with a PC game yet since building my rig in the summer, and I bought RAGE on Day 1. I'm stuck with a £28 game that is literally unplayable. Cannot be played.

PLEASE, does anyone suggest a possible fix? Really want to try and get this sorted. The game was working fine for me until Monday and now refuses to do anything.

So the game crashes before you have a chance to login to GFWL? Do you have auto login enabled for GFWL?
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
I had the same problem (crashing at the title screen). I was able to avoid it by following advice from this thread and signing into GFWL (by tapping the home button) before it hit the title screen.


....and to think some people still try to deny GFWL's instability and general uselessness. Ha.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Game is totally unplayable for me now.

I reported that the game was crashing for me a couple of pages back. Well I verified all the game files, re-installed GFWL, deleted and re-installed Arkham City entirely..

The latest occurrence is that now the game crashes at the title screen (right as the bats fly across the screen after the Nvidia intro) every single time I boot it up. 100% of the time, it crashes. "Arkham City is not responding". Every. Single. Time.

This is without doubt the worst experience I've had with a PC game yet since building my rig in the summer, and I bought RAGE on Day 1. I'm stuck with a £28 game that is literally unplayable. Cannot be played.

PLEASE, does anyone suggest a possible fix? Really want to try and get this sorted. The game was working fine for me until Monday and now refuses to do anything.
The only crashes I've ever encountered were when I tried to get past the title screen without signing into GFWL first.

You might also want to make sure the "Run as administrator" checkbox is ticked for the executable.
 

Bumhead

Banned
Here's what's happening.

1.) Load up Arkham City in Steam.
2.) Game loads. Works it's way through opening title splash, DC Comics, Rocksteady and WB Games Logos
3.) Get's to Nvidia logo. GFWL automatically logs in by this point. Pressing Home takes me to the GFWL interface where I see my message, friends etc. Pressing Home any earlier than this just displays "signing in" until it signs in.
4.) Game proceeds to the opening title screen and as soon as the bats finish flying across the screen, the game crashes to desktop and "Arkham City is not responding" appears right before it normally checks for downloadable content.

It's doing that 100% of the time now, despite me re-installing all the game files and a number of GFWL re-installs.
 
Here's what's happening.

1.) Load up Arkham City in Steam.
2.) Game loads. Works it's way through opening title splash, DC Comics, Rocksteady and WB Games Logos
3.) Get's to Nvidia logo. GFWL automatically logs in by this point. Pressing Home takes me to the GFWL interface where I see my message, friends etc. Pressing Home any earlier than this just displays "signing in" until it signs in.
4.) Game proceeds to the opening title screen and as soon as the bats finish flying across the screen, the game crashes to desktop and "Arkham City is not responding" appears right before it normally checks for downloadable content.

It's doing that 100% of the time now, despite me re-installing all the game files and a number of GFWL re-installs.
Try turning off auto-login and logging in before the logos finished.

Also, check and see if you have a firewall on.
 

Psy-Phi

Member
I had the same problem (crashing at the title screen). I was able to avoid it by following advice from this thread and signing into GFWL (by tapping the home button) before it hit the title screen.


....and to think some people still try to deny GFWL's instability and general uselessness. Ha.

It's not useless, it's doing it's job, making sure you have to use it (and thus have an account that the game is registered on) to even play it. Sounds like a homerun success to me :p.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Try turning off auto-login and logging in before the logos finished.

This is what I do, sometimes I still get crashes at the same part he does (especially since it usually doesn't log in before the nvidia logo is done, shit's slow).

Initially it was happening to me every time but when I verified the game cache on steam it redownloaded 1.8gb and after that I was able to play the game, though like I said I still sometimes get the crashes at the checking for DLC screen.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
It's not useless, it's doing it's job, making sure you have to use it (and thus have an account that the game is registered on) to even play it. Sounds like a homerun success to me :p.

Games For Windows Live: Can't play with it, can't play without it.
 
It's not useless, it's doing it's job, making sure you have to use it (and thus have an account that the game is registered on) to even play it. Sounds like a homerun success to me :p.
You can play it without an account. You just can't save, which kind of sucks but not a big deal if you never turn of the game.
 

Bumhead

Banned
No joy.

Disabled auto-log in, tried logging in manually before the logo's end. Disabled all my anti-virus etc (come at me).. still nothing. Same problem.

I want my fucking money back, to be honest. Absolutely ridiculous.
 
I had a similar problem with Dead Rising 2, Mat. Oddly enough I sorted it out by reinstalling Arkham Asylum which must have "fixed" my GFWL installation.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
No joy.

Disabled auto-log in, tried logging in manually before the logo's end. Disabled all my anti-virus etc (come at me).. still nothing. Same problem.

I want my fucking money back, to be honest. Absolutely ridiculous.
Did you try the administrator suggestion?
 

Bumhead

Banned
Nope. Where is the executable file itself?

Sorry, thats probably a REALLY stupid question. I'm still finding my feet with this sort of stuff and this is first time I've ever had problems on this sort of scale.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Nope. Where is the executable file itself?

Sorry, thats probably a REALLY stupid question. I'm still finding my feet with this sort of stuff and this is first time I've ever had problems on this sort of scale.

Should be where you installed Steam. Default would be something like Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\batman 2

I think it's in the Binaries directory or something? Then right-click, Properties, Compatibility tab, check "Run this program as administrator"
 

Jtrizzy

Member
You haven't made previous changes to your bmengine.ini file and set it to Read-only by chance, have you? That would keep any changes made by the launcher from taking effect.

thanks man that fixed it. I thought I needed to change that to read only when I was making some other changes iirc.
 

Peagles

Member
Finally AC came out and then... it runs like crap on my rig. I thought it'd be okay because AA ran fine. I wasn't going to crack open my Xbox copy but damn, looks like I'll have to now, not sure I can wait til my next upgrade.
 

Varna

Member
Tldr; What a crock of horseshit. One of the most powerful GPU's on the planet as a dedicated PhysX card and performance is up less than 5 FPS consistently.

I was saying the same shit back in the Alice thread. In general it's a pitiful gain in ANY game to have a dedicated physX card.
 

bigace33

Member
Man with all these complaints of issues I'm kind of glad I didn't wait and went ahead and bought the 360 version. I'm still going to get the PC version but I'll wait until a big steam sale.
 
Man with all these complaints of issues I'm kind of glad I didn't wait and went ahead and bought the 360 version. I'm still going to get the PC version but I'll wait until a big steam sale.

Console versions also suffer from the magical disappearing save files.

It seems like the game they just sort of rushed the game through QA and cert.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
Man with all these complaints of issues I'm kind of glad I didn't wait and went ahead and bought the 360 version. I'm still going to get the PC version but I'll wait until a big steam sale.

Aside from the GFWL crashes, I haven't had any issues with the port. I can pull off DX11, but I'd rather not deal with the performance issues, so I'm just playing in DX9 mode. If I can run it at 1080p and 60fps with a decent amount of AA, I'm happy. That's still a large step up from what I'd get out of the PS3 version.
 

Jtrizzy

Member
If there are any 3d experts in here I have a question. I'm running the game 1280x720 60 in 3D (Nvidia 3dtv play mode) but obviously with DX11 off. With a 580 and 2600k@4.3, what kind of frame rates/settings should I be looking for. Right now I'm having to go to 8x MSAA and Physx on normal to get smooth framerates when gliding. I can't see the fraps counter in 3d mode unfortunately.

Aside from the GFWL crashes, I haven't had any issues with the port. I can pull of DX11, but I'd rather not deal with the performance issues, so I'm just playing in DX9 mode. If I can run it at 1080p and 60fps with a decent amount of AA, I'm happy. That's still a large step up from what I'd get out of the PS3 version.

Yeah this game looks and runs great maxed out in DX9. It blows the PS3 version out of the water.
 

Kunohara

Member
Edit: For max quality Arkham City (DX9), change the following settings in bmengine.ini in My Documents/WBGames

Code:
MaxShadowResolution=4096 ;(try 2048 if you encounter shadow glitches, ALSO change this in Userengine.ini!!)
MinShadowResolution=32
MaxAnisotropy=16
bEnableBranchingPCFShadows=True
bAllowBetterModulatedShadows=True
bEnableForegroundShadowsOnWorld=True
bEnableForegroundSelfShadowing=True
bAllowWholeSceneDominantShadows=True
SizeOfPermanentObjectPool=19600000 ;(optional, may allow more RAM usage)
HysteresisLimit=20
DropMipLevelsLimit=16
StopIncreasingLimit=12
StopStreamingLimit=10

I'm missing some of the lines here in my actual bmengine.ini file. Can I just add them manually?
 

vehn

Member
can you not edit the physX settings if I have just one GTX 570? Or do you need a dedicated physx card for it
 

Presco

Member
Cross posting from the OT.

Help me GAF!

Trying to play a Steam copy of Arkham City PC for the first time and I'm stuck in an endless GFWL client update loop.

Launch game, hit enter, sign into live. Prompted with "An update is available for live. If you decline you will signed out of live. Do you want to apply the update?"

Accept update, update downloads. Prompted with "Please save your game progress and shut down the game to continue with the update."

Hit OK, shut down and restart game, restart cycle. It also won't work if I try and sign in immediately after having downloaded the update. Prompted with "An update is pending from live. Please save the game progress and shut down your game to continue with the update."

I'm very frustrated and tried to launch the game 10+ times while being prompted to update each time. I`m well versed in the asstardedness of GFWL from previous experience but it`s always been lost saves for me in the past. Endless update loop is a new one. Please help.
 

Lime

Member
I'm missing some of the lines here in my actual bmengine.ini file. Can I just add them manually?

Weird, I had all of them. Sure you are searching for the lines correctly? In bmengine.ini, right?

can you not edit the physX settings if I have just one GTX 570? Or do you need a dedicated physx card for it

Yes you can. Simply scroll down in the settings menu.
 

Kunohara

Member
Weird, I had all of them. Sure you are searching for the lines correctly? In bmengine.ini, right?

Yeah, I found the other lines just fine, most of the shadow ones were missing. I've been playing the game fine for hours, I just thought doing those edits would be nice to make my game run better. Am I the only one that has missing lines?
 

scitek

Member
Yeah, I found the other lines just fine, most of the shadow ones were missing. I've been playing the game fine for hours, I just thought doing those edits would be nice to make my game run better. Am I the only one that has missing lines?

They're not missing, the "hysteresislimit" and other lines are actually before the "maxshadowres," etc. CTRL+F, type them, and try searching Up and not Down. They're under the "TextureStreaming" section of the ini.
 

XOMTOR

Member
Cross posting from the OT.

Help me GAF!

Trying to play a Steam copy of Arkham City PC for the first time and I'm stuck in an endless GFWL client update loop.

Launch game, hit enter, sign into live. Prompted with "An update is available for live. If you decline you will signed out of live. Do you want to apply the update?"

Accept update, update downloads. Prompted with "Please save your game progress and shut down the game to continue with the update."

Hit OK, shut down and restart game, restart cycle. It also won't work if I try and sign in immediately after having downloaded the update. Prompted with "An update is pending from live. Please save the game progress and shut down your game to continue with the update."

I'm very frustrated and tried to launch the game 10+ times while being prompted to update each time. I`m well versed in the asstardedness of GFWL from previous experience but it`s always been lost saves for me in the past. Endless update loop is a new one. Please help.

By chance, do you have the Steam overlay disabled for this game? If so, enable it and then try updating.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
thanks man that fixed it. I thought I needed to change that to read only when I was making some other changes iirc.
Those lines should actually go in the UserEngine.ini file I thought? The bmengine.ini file is the default (hence why it always resets when you load the game), and if there are any lines in the UserEngine.ini file it overrides the equivalent lines in the bmengine file. At least that's my understanding.
 

Kunohara

Member
Yep, was the stupid up and down searching that did it. I did know to use ctrl f, just didn't use the up direction.

Found all the lines, thanks. But now I have to go to work instead of playing, really wanted to try out these new settings.
 

Sectus

Member
I hate you so much right now.

Also, holy shit, blade dodge takedown is 100 points? Had no idea.

I wrote down some of the different point bonuses to get an idea what's good to go for:
Strike = combo X 10
Critical strike = combo X 20
Counter = combo X 10
aerial attack = combo X 25
beat down finisher = combo X 50
ground pound = combo X 75
blade dodge takedown = combo X 100
enemy taken down by electric fence = 1 x 100

Catwoman:
special whiplash = combo X 5 X enemies hit
special whiptrip = combo X 5 X enemies hit
special takedown = combo X 50
bola = combo x 10

Blade dodge takedown is definitely the most worthwhile move. It's always a good idea to avoid attacking them if possible. Beat down is also a good thing to go for, I think the combo increases with 5 if you do it on a normal enemy. But do it against an armoured guy and it increases with around 15.
 
Blade dodge takedown is definitely the most worthwhile move. It's always a good idea to avoid attacking them if possible. Beat down is also a good thing to go for, I think the combo increases with 5 if you do it on a normal enemy. But do it against an armoured guy and it increases with around 15.


The great thing about Funhouse Brawl is the dude in Round 4, who is hilariously easy to kill yet builds up 40x combo from killing him straight off the bat. Bladedodge is REALLY hit and miss for me though, because I only pull it off about 60% of the time. I need to practice the timing on when to let go.

P.S. I'm rank 9 on that challenge now. Soon, Sectus. Soon.
 

Sectus

Member
I'm not good at the knife counter move...is it actually difficult, or am I just making it hard for some reason?

It shouldn't be hard once you understand how the timing works. You have to hold the counter button but briefly let go off the button between strikes. When you let go doesn't actually matter. It can be just after an attack or just before an attack. Just learn to do it in a rhythm, and you should be able to pull it off every time.

The only times it's consistently really hard is during hard mode against the
ninjas
since they do their attacks insanely fast.
 

Jtrizzy

Member
This has to be one of the better combat systems in a game. It's not insanely complicated or anything, but I was playing ACR last night, and it is definitely far beneath this game.
 

masterkajo

Member
This has to be one of the better combat systems in a game. It's not insanely complicated or anything, but I was playing ACR last night, and it is definitely far beneath this game.

It is reallly easy to understand but hard to master. Very addictive too. Nothing beats the feeling of clearing a round with a without getting hit and max combo. I love to play the challanges before and after some story sessions. Catwoman > Batman though. He is just too slow in comparison (except ground takedown).
 

Sectus

Member
Yeah, the combat system is great. It's really refreshing to see a 3rd person melee combat system which is entirely unique. It's also really really nice the combat system doesn't require mcuh memorization. The dial-a-combo moves (aka, move inputs like X->X->B) is something I've never liked and it's way too popular in action games.
 

Derrick01

Banned
I really like the combat but I'm a little ticked that they didn't change not being able to interrupt ground takedowns when someone's about to hit you. Both Batman and especially Catwoman take too long to do one so you've pretty much gotta wait until there's only an enemy or two left.
 

Druz

Member
No joy.

Disabled auto-log in, tried logging in manually before the logo's end. Disabled all my anti-virus etc (come at me).. still nothing. Same problem.

I want my fucking money back, to be honest. Absolutely ridiculous.

Right click the Batman shortut. Click Properties, then compatibility tab. Check the box that says run as administrator and disable desktop composition.

Not assured to work but always cover your bases.
 
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