Jimquisition: Shaming PC Ports Because Why Not?

[DarkhoIlow]

I think this is the first time that I will say this, but I would rather play the broken exclusive console title on my PC and hopefully we will get a guy like Durante to "fix" the game and play it rather than not play it at all.

That is my stance on it pretty much.

 

[Strazdas]

The thing is, Jim, is that those amaterous are likely more knowledgable than the whole dev team doing the porting. They know thier game, they odnt really know programming for PC, thus - problem. I agree that easy fix should be already done in the first place and all that but those "amateurs" are likely more professional than the developers themselves. in fact most of them probably work with such programming and create the fix as a hobby to tinger with knowledge they already have.

A port of House of the Dead: Overkill was released on Steam as Typing of the Dead: Overkill. Cool concept, must have. The problem is that it's unstable and crashes (in my case, it crashes my computer as it attempts to load). After releasing a patch and some DLC, the problem persists. Needless to say, this video speaks to me and I'm not going to buy a game on PC unless I read some feedback to ensure that it will actually run!

Jim played it on his youtube channel and it didnt crash and at least he didnt mention it crashing so i gues it could be specific to your PC perhaps?

And assuming you played it with a controller, you had about the same thing as the console version.

Thats a big assumtion though. i know there are people who use controllers for PC games but thats hardly a majority of PC gamers.

Look, I acknowledge that Bethesda can make some pretty good games...

... But at the same time, most of their games are released in a VERY unfinished, buggy, even broken state before the mod communities can fix the issues themselves.

quote funny thing with Bet6hesda games, from what little my personal experience matters, their games are among the "more stable" ones. I guess my PC architecture was similar to what they programmed the thing on.

Well why shouldnt an inexperienced crew try to port thier works to PC?

How can they learn to do a good job of it if they do not make the mistakes?

Thier mistakes should be noticed and fixed during the quality assurance phase before release of the product though.
That kinda was the whole argument. if there are fixes people do in their spare time within 24 hours, those fixes should have been done before the release to begin with.

"Don't port games to PC" ~ Jim Sterling

More like "dont port games to PC badly"

Seems quite odd that companies that can program for consoles which are well known for being more complex systems, manage to screw up pc versions given that it should be much quicker to manage. Maybe they simply cant handle the variety of hardware options... a general problem of the PC master race dream.

Programming is like languages (actually, its even called programming language). You may know for example Russian, but not know much simpler English language. Even if you know the more complex one, you still cant speak English though.

Hardware variaty has kinda stopped being a big problem. we got almost universal drivers (and you code to driver/windows API, not to hardware when you code PC) and windows API handles the rest.

Agreed, but if nobody buys into the first crash landing then why should the devs consider coming back for a second go?

Why should i buy a product that does not pass first round of basic quality assurance?

If anyone doesn't know how to PC port... it's Bethesda.
For anyone who isn't a tentacle monster, a Hindu god/dess, or an elitist hipster... the base keyboard and mouse for Bethesda games are unplayable with these human hands and fingers.

At least they include controller support on their PC titles for all the humans who play.

I guess im a tentacle monster then since i find the default keyboard (which you CAN remap) quite confortable.

Jim:

I love your videos, but I really wish I could watch them at work on my lunch break. I'm not even talking about purple dildos. It's just that every sentence has a curse-word this week. Does it have to be every sentence? I kept turning the volume down and finally had to just stop the video.
Sorry to complain.

solution: headphones
I use this solution at work myself. Works great.

At least PC ports are made in the first place for most games. One big exception that makes me sad is GTA V. There is still no sign of a PC port anytime soon, and I don't want to be simply satisfied with a 30-FPS sub-1080p game with multiplayer requiring a significant fee - on Xbox 360, a console that I am rarely using. I'm not buying a PS3 for GTA V either, because it will soon become just a memory for developers.

Well they wont be saying anything till christmas because they want people to buy the old console version for christmas. afterwards we will see.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I'll have to defend FROM Software here. They are shit at making PC ports because they have no experience and no knowledge about it, and they didn't want to make a PC port of Dark Souls for that reason. Dark Souls on PC is not a shameless cash grab with a substandard product, it is a company going out of its comfort zone to appease a vocal group of fans to the best of its ability. Yes, they made money off it, and yes someone with more expertise was able to vastly improve the port fairly quickly. But FROM did what they could, making it very clear that they had no idea what they were doing and that it was likely going to be a poor port. And in the end, the PC market asked and it received, and given the capacity for mods, I'd say it's even less of a problem than the problems the PS3 version had, including the miracle synching mechanic not working at all for a long while.

 

[Talvrae]

I might be mistaken but don't usually in general PC version are sold cheaper than console version?

 

[Festus Moonbear]

See, this is why PC gaming sucks. Most of the consumers are thieves, and the few paying customers that do exist are way too accepting of half-finished games being released because they know they'll get an unofficial patch for free from some poor genius who might get a couple of paypal donations thrown his way if he's lucky. They should have kept Dark Souls for console only, and cut the problem off at the root. PC gamers ruin everything.

(Please don't kill me, I have kids.)

 

[Dragonbums]

Well why shouldnt an inexperienced crew try to port thier works to PC?

How can they learn to do a good job of it if they do not make the mistakes?

If you are part of the professional AAA industry you should know how to not make a broken ass mess of a PC port.

I highly doubt it was that hard to get some third party computer and test drive the thing out to see if they missed anything.


If nobody Jane who's only done shit mods on Minecraft can fix something you were paid thousands to do not only for free, but under a day, than whether or not you are experienced or a noob is irrelevant. Shame on you.

You were paid to be good or at the very least decent at it.

 

[Erico Basilio]

Well why shouldnt an inexperienced crew try to port thier works to PC?

How can they learn to do a good job of it if they do not make the mistakes?

I don't want to pay money to be someone's guinea pig. That's what beta testing and QA is for.

Agreed, but if nobody buys into the first crash landing then why should the devs consider coming back for a second go?

If the product isn't up to standard, of course no one will buy it. It's not the customers responsibility to "take one for the team" so that- hopefully!- they get it right next time.

well in rage's case it was zenimax who forced id to make a console to PC port instead their classic role model from PC to Console

and we saw what happened.

also in bethesda's case, its been 1 year since DB but really, they didn't wanted to implement spears or throwing weapons because the of gamebryo that they used in skyrim is still a incomplete version due to their rushed time and incompetence.

im not bashing bethesda because the fallout 4 hoax

 

[Deadagent]

Final Fantasy VIII was released on Steam last Thursday. It turned out it had horrible MIDI music instead of something proper. Awful PC port incarnate.

And then while my friend and I were working on a fan mod to fix it, this video came out. Timing couldn't have been more perfect. Anyway, we fixed the music in a mere four days. Watch as Square-Enix doesn't do anything about it.

P.S. Thanks

Even tough it was released on steam recently, that port has existed since 2000. As such so has a fix, you and your friend did four days of work for nothing im afraid.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I'll have to defend FROM Software here. They are shit at making PC ports because they have no experience and no knowledge about it, and they didn't want to make a PC port of Dark Souls for that reason. Dark Souls on PC is not a shameless cash grab with a substandard product, it is a company going out of its comfort zone to appease a vocal group of fans to the best of its ability. Yes, they made money off it, and yes someone with more expertise was able to vastly improve the port fairly quickly. But FROM did what they could, making it very clear that they had no idea what they were doing and that it was likely going to be a poor port. And in the end, the PC market asked and it received, and given the capacity for mods, I'd say it's even less of a problem than the problems the PS3 version had, including the miracle synching mechanic not working at all for a long while.

That's not an excuse. If they didn't know how, they should have hired someone to port it properly, or not do it at all. That is only a valid excuse if the product they are releasing is completely free.

Exactly, they could of easily hire Nixxes to make the PC port. They did it for Deus Ex Human Revolution and it was a great port.

"Not knowing how to port" is a lazy excuse when you can outsource it to someone who can.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

And what about PC only games that can also become shite like Rome 2?, who gets to scapegoat a console then?, the answer is nobody.

Also for every time a "fan" "fixes" the game, if the devs are supposed to hang their heads in shame then maybe they should quit their job and become a hobo on the street because if they had to for every time a fan stepped in there would be thousands of jobless devs.

I'm not even trying to excuse bad porting, I'm just pointing out that some should be thankful and not have to resort to automatically hanging heads in shame and QQ'ing from the scene like Jim would suggest.

Also a question (not really a question since I know half the answer) but say if it were the other way around a PC to console port and it turned out to be gutter trash (and if this happened over and over) would any of you here give an actual care at all for those people then?.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Seems quite odd that companies that can program for consoles which are well known for being more complex systems, manage to screw up pc versions given that it should be much quicker to manage. Maybe they simply cant handle the variety of hardware options... a general problem of the PC master race dream.

Programming is like languages (actually, its even called programming language). You may know for example Russian, but not know much simpler English language. Even if you know the more complex one, you still cant speak English though.

Hardware variaty has kinda stopped being a big problem. we got almost universal drivers (and you code to driver/windows API, not to hardware when you code PC) and windows API handles the rest.

Well I would know.. I'm a programmer... You should know that although most current console are programmed to be compliant with OpenGL and DX9 standards the hardware variety is VERY MUCH STILL A PROBLEM. When you are going into very detailed specs of a platform, every hardware profile requires a decent amount of tinkering to get the most out of it. This is why each graphics card manufacturer has specific shader instructions that benefit a certain shader model and a particular hardware model. And although when using a generic engine (Unity, Unreal, Cry engine) this is less of a problem, even in those cases when optimising a game for release there is a pretty extensive process to ensure all most used hardware profiles are compatible or at least stable..
You should also know that most game engines are programmed in C++, while they might use other languages for scripting and other higher level functions but the meat and bones is generally c++ paired with different Directx - Opengl pipelines. SO although they might not be familiar with all the languages, most of them stem from c++ functions and the programming logic remains.
-Dark souls uses c++ with Opengl -DirectX just as windows. It is not a different language. Most games are programmed with this same combination.-
THIS is why the guy who made the DarkSouls patch used some standard DX9 libraries (and some cooler advanced DX10 and DX11 handles) with additional functions to wrap around the executable of the game STILL IN C++. It is not ANOTHER LANGUAGE, it is just someone who mostly knows what he is doing on modern pc architecture. And it goes to show that some Japanese developers have a hard time adjusting to hardware differences.

When you have custom rendering pipelines even slight tweaks can give you very unexpected results. THIS is why even Dice is having several compatibility issues with Frostbite 3 engine, which is designed to be cross platform... The "coding to API" is only a bit of a catch phrase. because modern games don't really rely heavily on the windows API themselves other than in a most surface level... Most modern rendering techniques are dependant directly on GPU, and have their own interfaces with them (Directx 11 is pretty much all shader), and while Windows indeed gives access to some of those functions, low level development requires use of specific functionality. In a similar sense, it seems FROM software was more experienced in OpenGL development than DrirectX. Given that Demon Souls was developed in the proprietary Sony opengl/directx "Phyre Engine". Which was modified to run in xbox 360 for Dark souls. This engine was never designed to run on pc, and although windows pc architecture is based on direct X... A lot of developers prefer Opengl simply because it is not a Microsoft owned technology. So that would explain their inefficiency.

I'd advice you to research what you are saying before you just spout it out.

Also, bethesda games aren't broken because they don't run on a "similar pc as they were programmed on" they are just buggy on a logical scripting level. When you can have -testable, repeatable game-breaking bugs that occur across all platforms it is not a hardware conflict-, it is just careless scripting and probably underlying bad programming. In part this is caused due to their extended use of rather old tech that they have ported further and further patching endlessly over bugs that create other bugs.. forever. I don't know bethesda's complete framework, but I know Gamebryo which they have used for most of their games... And it is kind of a mess of an engine..

 

[Seracen]

Never explicitly thought about it, but it IS an issue. PC gamers have ALWAYS known that they are really the BETA testers, if they buy a game at launch. As often, however, I prefer the PC version simply because mods provide more value then the nickel and diming that console versions provide (often with inferior results). It's sad, but sometimes it's worse than others.


[snip]

To be fair, however, I think Bethesda and Bioware got a pass on their snafus due to the release of their toolkits (although Jim's point about patches/etc within the 1st week still put the developers "on notice," as it were).

But isn't that also kind of the point? Some of the most popular games are among the most broken. Giving out a toolkit and saying "fix this shit for us" is basically the issue at hand, and ravenously supporting some of the biggest examples only means there will be more of them.

Wouldn't it be a better use of modders' time to make actual mods, rather than trying to patch up crappy code?

Oh, I agree. I am just saying that that's why people gave them a pass. My word choice was poor. Most people saw the ability to make all this bonus content, and didn't blame the need to patch.


I'm more concerned that they might remove such access in the future (like Dragon Age 2). I am almost certain EA told BW to not post a devkit for DA2, b/c they didn't want users generating their own "Free DLC." What's to keep a company from seeing it like that?

For me, if the DLC is worth it, and not fleecing me, I don't care. Take Skyrim: I just as likely to buy the Dawngaurd DLC as download and play the Faalskar Mod. But I digress...

Yes, users should be busy creating more content, not fixing old content. On the other hand, the company shouldn't then just print a barebones game, and expect users to flesh out the content.

Not saying Little Big Planet did this, HOWEVER...

I remember Sony and Gamestop reps telling me to buy the game on potential. The game, as it existed, was negligible, they said. What I was buying was the ability to make my own games, and download an endless supply of other peoples' games.

Which is fine for a cheap devkit, or something affordable like Minecraft. A honed, $60 experience from SONY? Not as much...

 

[Stavros Dimou]

I might be mistaken but don't usually in general PC version are sold cheaper than console version?

This is usually happening because on PCs there is no platform holder cutting royalties from sales and forcing developers to use a fixed price for their products.

SONY,Microsoft,and Nintendo all have fixed price points for their consoles,and demand from developers / publishers to pay a 10$ fee for each copy of a game sold for their systems.

Since there isn't such a thing as a pimp on the PCs,anyone can sell a game at any pricepoint he wants,without having to give away royalty cuts to a "platform holder". That means that not only the percentage of earnings the developer and publisher get is bigger,but they also have the flexibility to lower the price of their product at any time they want if they see that it doesn't sell well.

That's why games on PCs are usually less expensive than console games.
The lower price isn't supposed to be because of bad quality,but because there is no pimp taking away developer's money.

 

[Strazdas]

Thats a big assumtion though. i know there are people who use controllers for PC games but thats hardly a majority of PC gamers.

It's not that terrible of an assumption. An XBOX controller for Windows is cheap, helps you with plenty of games (fighting games especially) and you don't have to use it all the time to get some value out of it.

But again, my point was that Dark Souls is more of an isolated case of bad porting where the developers listened to their community's demands and it's better to have this port (however lackluster it may be) instead of not having it at all, even without DSFix.

Its not about how cheap the controller is (you can get a keyboard+mouse for 10 dollars btw, and they work fine). Its about people chosing to use keyboard and mouse (primary PC input) because they LIKE it.

Also for every time a "fan" "fixes" the game, if the devs are supposed to hang their heads in shame then maybe they should quit their job and become a hobo on the street because if they had to for every time a fan stepped in there would be thousands of jobless devs.

If you are THAT bad at a job that you have failed to port for a hundred times maybe you shouldnt have a job porting games?

 

[Vrach]

But wasn't the PC version of Dark Souls priced less than the console versions?

I would imagine that would be because it came out several months later, thus no longer being a new game.

Agree with what you said Jim (particularly the part of "if someone out there fixes your game in a day, you should feel ashamed, not glad"), though I have to say I have played Dark Souls on the PC without any mods and had no issues with anything (my brother had some, but that was due to fucking GFWL). I've got the game on PS3 as well and I play both on the same monitor, I didn't notice any inferior graphics on the PC. That said, I could've just been lucky, I've heard of people losing save files and the like.

Either way though, the point stands strong, the amount of shitty PC ports has been ridiculous lately and needs to stop, regardless of whether it can be fixed by the community.

 

[Hazzard]

Perhaps having a section on PC ports for each review? That could help make a step against this trend. Also, what about a locked FOV and you then get a Cease and Desist when they try to unlock it like COD: Ghosts?