Watch Dogs PC Modders Find Hidden "E3" Settings, Improve Performance - Update

[FFMaster]

PS3 was the most powerful console of last generation. in fact its CPU was multiple times more powerful. its just that it used a cell design, which is great in theory, hell to program for in practice, so noone actually used all its power, ever. because everyone went for the lowest denominator Xbox and PS3 version was merely "just as much" rather than "all PS3 can do".

This has no bearing on the main point. The point being argued was that the WiiU architecture was different and hard to work with (which is btw something devs that actually work with it say isn't true, its not as easy as the PS4/XBone, but is better than PS3 by a long way) . My point is that hte PS3 was a lot lot harder to work with .. and people still made games for it. Its power is nothing to do with this discussion, its the architecture.

 

[shadowstriker86]

Snip.

I love how you use EVERY excuse you can get just to preach/show off about how good Stalker/Metro run/looks.

I approve, only because Ubisoft is run by a bunch of lobotomized monkeys, they brag about having "teh best graphicz", while Stalker has already done this since 2008 and very few games have reached that quality, even less surpassed it. They deserve every corny bit of shit the fury machine of the internet will throw at them.

Spoiler: Also this...

Ohhohohohohohohoho, I'm getting some popcorn, this week does look interesting indeed

Me too, this is exactly why i stay up at 2-3 in the morning, just to find these little gems

 

[Nurb]

Well this is certainly an interesting debacle. Even the cynic in me wouldn't have guessed that Ubisoft would actually sabotage the PC version of their game.

It makes me wish piracy actually had an effect on big publishers because this sort of monopoly needs to go bankrupt

What monopoly?

The three major publishers own most of the well known developers as they have been buying them up since the mid 90's.

 

[MeTalHeD]

Here is the thing I openly admitted I do not why this was done, only that we have obvious and irrefutable evidence that it was done. You snap out "Oh wait you admit yourself you have no idea why it was done" like that is a bad thing when its the total opposite, its a good thing because unlike some I am not trying to be an authority that knows the answer.

There is nothing wrong with being honest and not trying to push my claims as fact, I make it pretty clear that it was speculation instead of something objective. Unlike others who state with an unequivocal inference that they are right, that their comments are facts.

I did not make a direct accusation that Sony where "to blame" at all, I asked the question:-

Did the collaborative marketing between Ubisoft and Sony that pushed the PS4 version as "The True Watch Dogs Experience" have any influence on Ubisofts decision to neuter the graphical fidelity of the PC release?

In one my examples I said that Sony might have had nothing to do with it but Ubisoft might have decided to remove the PCs GFX settings so they didn't run the risk of having any impact on their relationship with Sony, in others I said that Ubisoft didn't want to risk affecting sales of the PS4 version by having a far more graphically attractive PC release.

This was just speculation, intended to spark discussion but all it did was attract argument with people trying to nitpick and dance around words and definitions and shouting "gimmme sauce!" whilst providing nothing of value themselves, I can only blame myself though as I should have known better than to walk over that bridge.

I asked for proof of the big three being to blame and you proceeded to post that nonsense about how Sony promoting the game, and the word definitive being used being a "smoking gun".
And than "how much more "proof" do you need? Thats pretty much case closed unless someone is determined to follow a pre conceived bias that flies in the face of facts", so yes you did state Sony were to blame.

Don't try to weasel out of it.

I don't think he was arguing that there it is was definitely happening so much has he found it strange that Ubisoft would do this. They've made games on PC that worked before (Splinter Cell and Farcry series, for example - and they weren't too bad) so why is this one so badly made? While I don't think it's a conspiracy, this is mind boggling. Why would a company willfully handicap a PC released game when it has released PC games before that actually work? They aren't new to this.

We cannot completely rule out any influence from the console manufacturers. They all want more sales and because they're struggling these days, they would want to stop anything that might make them look bad. Bad games hurt the consoles because people buy the consoles for the games. If a game has the potential to improve console sales - especially when a new console is released - they will do anything to make sure their console gets some recognition when the game is released. Hence the "definitive" version.

You can't assume there was zero influence from the console manufacturers, especially because Ubisoft announced the definitive version would be on the PS4. Why not the PC? What did Sony do that made Ubisoft swing that way instead? Why would they intentionally handicap the PC version? These questions lead to some uncomfortable theories, like the possibility that they may have been influenced by console manufacturers. It would not be in Sony's interest, for example, to be shown up by a superior platform if indeed the graphics are better on it.

These are the questions people want answers to because this just doesn't add up. It's like a murder mystery. People don't know if indeed it was Colonel Mustard in the study with a candestick, but it isn't impossible to make deductions based on the fact that there's a dead body in the study. Proof or no proof, until we get the actual reason this happened, people are going to make some deductions, many of them actually being reasonable.

By reasonable, I don't mean aliens abducted some of the programmers and they had to replace the team with monkeys. I mean that maybe:

1. Ubisoft's commitment to Sony meant they weren't going to jeopardize the relationship by releasing a better looking game on PC. Improved graphics and smoother gaming on PC would mean people would rather pay $60 for those extra 30 frames per second and better graphics, instead of $60 for 30fps and at lower resolution. (remember Ubisoft downgrading their graphics and FPS predications too?) - This assumes Ubisoft makes more money on console (and PS4) than it does on PC.

2. Ubisoft was limited by next gen technology. Their programmers had to design a game that would include hacking in an open world setting that wouldn't destroy the hardware on a console. Working within the confines meant making shortcuts. This meant ditching better lighting, shading, physics and shading so the game would even run (at 30fps) on console. - This assumes Ubisoft overestimated the console's abilities or they didn't anticipate to hit the graphical snares they did.

3. Ubisoft were incompetent, neglectful and inefficient. They wasted time on game mechanics that didn't work, had to change the game multiple times during development and had to make cuts along the way. This can happen to any company because they may have made bad decisions during development which they had to ditch or adjust. This could lead to design flaws and problems in the game, including bad optimisation and bad graphics. Without more time to fix the problems, they released an incomplete game within their deadline, hoping they could fix it along the way. - This assumes the 5 years they spent on it wasn't enough. It assumes they didn't know what they were doing or what direction the game was going to take and didn't have enough time to finalise things, especially for PC.

4. Ubisoft wasted its budget or ran short of cash. Much like point 3, a lack of money would impact on the quality of the game. Without the extra staff or expertise to finish levels or gameplay mechanics, it would lead to shortcuts. This would mean they didn't have enough people to actually improve and optimise the game properly. In point 3 they wasted time on nonsense, while here they just didn't have the budget to make sure there were enough people working on all features. - This assumes Ubisoft either underestimated what it would need to complete the game or they ran short of funds for any number of reasons (lawsuits, expanding marketing budgets, company parties etc).

There are probably other points I may not have included. Those are the ones that stuck out for me.

When money is involved, companies do strange, stupid and illegal things to get ahead. Sometimes they are indeed caught with their pants down. They won't tell you why their pants are down and we'll have to conclude it ourselves until video footage surfaces of console manufacturers pulling their pants down. They might even try to spin it with marketing saying it's better because their junk can finally breathe. They then try to offer us said junk and they wonder why we're angry when we feel screwed after paying $60 for their overhyped, short and uninteresting junk...

 

[BrotherRool]

Doubtful. Steam sales give publishers a much higher profit margin compared to console sales. So I seriously doubt Microsoft/Sony could offer them enough to compensate for any losses of PC sales.

Microsoft/Sony take a 15% cut, Steam takes a 15% cut. What is true is that Steam sales don't have to play platform and retail royalties but that's entirely absorbed by the fact that PC games are $10 cheaper.

Also Steam sales (and multiplatform PC sales in general) are a small fraction of console sales which is why PC keeps getting loaded with cruddy ports.

Take Skyrim for example, 59% of sales were on the 360, 27% on the PS3 and only 14% on the PC [http://www.statisticbrain.com/skyrim-the-elder-scrolls-v-statistics/]. And if anything Skyrim is PC biased. It's the best selling Steam non-Valve game [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/] with 6 million sales and the modding aspect of Skyrim is huge.

There are actually only 2 non-Valve owned games which have sold more than 4.2 million total on Steam [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/steam-gauge-addressing-your-questions-and-concerns/2/]. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.19 million on Steam compared and yet MW2 sold 15 million in it's first couple of months of release. Of Far Cry 3s 9 million plus sales, only 1.3 million of those belong to Steam. Tomb Raider sold 7 million plus, but only 1.9 million on Steam.

And these figures are after the Steam sales. To give you an idea to the extent that the Steam sales come from discounted games, a full 300,000 of those Tomb Raider sales belong to people who have never even played the game.

So I imagine PC comes a solid last place in terms of profitability for cross-platform titles. Of course it's still pulling in millions which should easily justify good porting. I don't see why anyone would want to spite PC, because I really doubt PC impacts console hardware sales very much*, but it's just at the limits of what people might pay to spite it.

*I'm pretty sure the choice between console and PC is fundamentally about where and how you like to play your games so I doubt the percentage of people who might do one or the other is very big. If you game on PCs your probably going to continue to game on PCs and the same with consoles. I wouldn't be surprised if only 1% of people are on the fence

 

[sagitel]

I think people are overreacting a little about this one. This game runs like shit on PC, right? No wonder they cut stuff from it.
Besides, there are tons of Skyrim mods, for example, where people are unlocking cool stuff that is inside the code of the game, but for some reason the devs have decided to disable it.

p.s. But do rage on, guys, Ubi is shit anyways.

Whell the game actually runs BETTER when those stuff are in it. Its just idiotic. And the reasin bethesda gets a free pass on people fixing their games is that they dont lock you out. They know you want to change the game and they allow you. (They even released a development kit for crying out loud. You dont see ubi does that kind of thing) and im not gonna talk about the shitty drm ubisoft uses.

Ps. I've never heard of locked stuff inside of skyrim's code. Can you give me some sources to read on?

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

It totally would not surprise me if the idea was to release a "patch" that turned all these features on, n optimized the frame rate. But , as I stated before I harbor a growing hatered for Ubisoft so, call me biased.

Yeah didn't they do that with Assassin's Creed 4? IIRC they made the smoke plumes and explosions look a lot better a few months after launch.

On topic, I haven't played this game, but I hear the problems run a bit deeper than the graphics. I've seen a video poking fun at all the problems this game has and most of it was relating more to shoddy AI and weird clipping issues.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

This mod is amazing. I don't know what the hell to say about the "conspiracy", but the fact is that a complete amateur was able to accomplish what a dozen professional teams around the world couldn't. If it wasn't complete incompetence, I think they might have been afraid to release an objectively superior version. Sony was paying them, for the exclusive content and DLC and all the talk-up of how it's the ultimate on PS4. I don't think Sony paid them in a back alley and said "and that PC version better not make us look second-rate, buddy". I don't know what Ubisoft would have to gain by deterring people from buying the PC version, obviously they consider it a worthy platform or they wouldn't port everything to it (badly).

Either way, I got a MASSIVE performance increase from this mod. I have an ancient GTX 465 1GB, and I was getting 25-35 FPS with everything on medium. With the mod, I can turn everything but textures and water up to high and with that I'm getting 35-45. I can actually turn the textures up to high despite the 1 GB VRAM, but it stutters really bad. It doesn't show up on the FPS counter but it affects mouse movement and is pretty awful. Also, everyone can try adding "-disablepagefilecheck" without the quotes after their shortcut in the launcher properties, that helped too.

Much thanks to The Worse, he made Watch Dogs playable for me and had it look better in the process. Much thanks to Ubisoft for making a fun game, too. I just...wish that they made it this functional themselves?

 

[Slash2x]

I think people are overreacting a little about this one. This game runs like shit on PC, right? No wonder they cut stuff from it.
Besides, there are tons of Skyrim mods, for example, where people are unlocking cool stuff that is inside the code of the game, but for some reason the devs have decided to disable it.

p.s. But do rage on, guys, Ubi is shit anyways.

Ummmm the point is it does NOT run like shit if you turn on the E3 stuff..... So they DISABLED the stuff that helped it run smoother and look better. I used the mod and gained 20+ FPS and it now looks amazing with ZERO stutter.

At minimum there is a what was the point in turning this off and hiding it question running around.

 

[DTWolfwood]

The man can stick to what he says all he want, its still contrary to the evidence.

You can't expect PR reps. to actually tell you the truth lol

 

[Saucycarpdog]

Reddit is planning to flood ubisoft with refunds, chargebacks, lawsuits, and a shit load of other shit. They are now trying to get to every single executive they can find and flood their inbox with complaints. I personally hope they hit Ubisoft where it hurts.

If Ubisoft gets slapped with a lawsuit and loses their W_D profits, I'd be so happy.

Or of course a huge multiplatform boycott that sends the message that consumers aren't idiots and they should stop lying to their customers.

Sounds more like you just don't want WD to be a success. I personally liked the game. I don't think it needs to die just because you didn't like it.

I'm not defending Ubisoft by any stretch but I'm getting so sick and tired of people praying and begging for certain games to fail just because they personally didn't like.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

debating whether or not that's worse then when people had to use a mod to get the PC version working right. Still, Ubisoft have been doing a lot of damage to their rep lately, whether it be them holding a Wii U game hostage from release until it sells more, making stupid comments about female characters in Assassin's Creed, and now this. I think them being complete assholes wouldn't bother me so much if they were COMPETENT. As it stands it astounds me how these guys make any sort of profit when they make such boneheaded decisions and then are positively SHOCKED when people tell them how stupid they are. And remember: THESE are the kinds of people that we're supposed to trust to bring us new and exciting experiences for gaming. That's kind of terrifying, ain't it?

 

[Buckshaft]

Oooh, they pissed off the master race. I wouldn't want to be working for the team that made that...

 

[dragongit]

wow... Ok Ubisoft, when you take features or settings out, disabling them except for those who can change the code to reverse them to their original settings; That's what I'd call a downgrade.

Now if only we could properly get the explosions and fog effects. I'm sure someone can mod the game to be able to run these effects and STILL perform more optimally then it's vanilla settings.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

And that comment ? Strange. Usually a de-compiler cannot find comments in the code as the compiler skipped over them but they may have used some setting in the compiler to preserve the comments in the binary file.

Odds are they won't have done, someone will have de-compiled and added it as a joke but because the Internet, people think that it's definitely the code in-game and people who know stuff about compilers are wrong.

Spoiler: Saw this comment on Reddit, definitely a likely explanation

Always knew that the lack of features was down to performance and time limits, but I'm curious to how this now unfolds because "console peasants" conspiracy.

 

[azurine]

We have two threads about this already:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.852859-Modders-unlock-Watch-Dogs-hidden-graphics-settings

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.852867-Watch-Dogs-Pc-graphics-limited-on-purpose-E3-2012-graphic-files-found-hidden-inside-the-game-files

But I suppose we should try and spread the word about this as much as possible.
Because this is baffling.

 

[Rabid_meese]

The settings in question that were in the code weren't there for launch probably because of stability issues. The mod that fellow released does, if what I've read, contain files that he also created.

And as for that line of code that's going around - bullshit. A screenshot is literally useless. That could be from anything from anywhere. A little more proof is required before demonizing a company.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=838538&page=21
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4843210#post4843210

Its a real screenshot from the shader files, specifically deferredambient.inc.fx located in the shaders.dat file. A compressed file that can be unpacked into readable files. Anyone can go and unpack that file and see it. Its been confirmed.


A simple google search can find it.

"Hey, this guy is saying screenshots are meaningless bullshit. Lets show him he's wrong by showing him more screenshots"

Again. A screenshot of the code means nothing. Is there proof this is from the game Watch Dogs? How would this code have leaked? A few people have brought up that the code, in this manner, would not be shown unless Watch Dogs had its source code leaked as well. If it was leaked, where is the proof that the people put in the comment "for the PC, who cares".

Authenticity is something that is nearly impossible to prove in this manner, short of cracking the code yourself and taking a look. And even so - what is the context of the line? How are you sure that it wasn't a joke? Can you prove that these files were not embedded into the code for a future HDR download, and not enabled by default because it needed optimization work? The default PC launch has been plagued by performance issues, which seem to be mimicked with this mod, as well as even further drops on machines that aren't high end.

There is no definitive proof of the authenticity or proof of malice. The downgrade could have happened for a plethora of reasons - from optimized performance, aesthetic choices, or for later optimization purposes, and a single screenshot does not make for damning proof in an age where anyone can edit anything.

 

[truckspond]

Wow... Ubisoft PR has obviously not seen the numerous comparison videos between the graphics at release and the graphics with the minor tweaks to the config file that make up the entirety of the "Mod". Using the word "Mod" implies that something was added to the game. This is not the case here - Nothing is added, the stuff is just taken out of hiding

 

[Balimaar]

Personally I wish theyd spend a little more cash on improving Uplay account security. Less than a week after I installed Watch Dogs someone somehow was able to access my account AND change details i.e. username, password, email... ALL WITHOUT ANY alerts to the original email that things were being changed...