Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/11/deadly-premonition-pc-durante/

by prostoalex • 13 years ago

157 63 13 years ago

gagege3• 13 years ago

There is a long tradition of mods, fixes and enhancements in PC gaming. The PC version often ends up being much better than the console version. The privacy and DRM issues with current consoles are bad, but this article demonstrates my favorite reason to just buy a decent video card for your existing PC, rather than buy a console.

slantyyz• 13 years ago

> The PC version often ends up being much better than the console version.

Assuming there is a PC version of the game in question.

In the age since the first XBox, consoles have brought a lot of PC-style gaming to the masses (mainly FPS games), but there are also a ton of non-FPS gaming genres that don't have a very large presence on PC.

I used to be a big console guy and would love to move to a PC-centric gaming environment -- but because I don't do FPS or MMORGs, my gaming options are much more limited -- I'm into fighting and rhythm games.

Hopefully the emergence of things like the Steam Machines will change this situation and big named publishers start producing more PC-based ports of their console hits.

Filligree• 13 years ago

I feel your pain, re. decent rhythm games.

Have you tried Sequence, though? I enjoyed that, and the story is nothing to sneeze at either.

Groxx3• 13 years ago

My favorite reason is that games from 10 years ago still run, and as a last resort I can fire up a VM, on a modern computer. My N64 cartridges, meanwhile, stopped working in new machines as soon as the Gamecube came out. And if the console ever dies, they get harder and harder to find.

lclarkmichalek• 13 years ago

I got a Windows 8.1 laptop a few days ago, and was delighted to find that a game I first played 13 years ago worked out of the box (though I fear I may need to find install a mod to take advantage of modern screen resolutions). It was even usable, if not without its quirks, on a touch screen! For all the hate that Microsoft gets, their backwards compatibility is absolutely insane.

Luc5• 13 years ago

Project 64 is pretty good nowadays: http://www.pj64-emu.com/

endemic• 13 years ago

Wat? One of the things I like about consoles is that they are plug 'n play. No fiddling with trying to get emulation settings just right.

w4rh4wk5• 13 years ago

He is one of my lecturers at university and god damn awesome at what he does. cheers

seivan3• 13 years ago

I am glad it's about a computer scientist (hacker) that performed an action that wasn't subjective and not some 'game designer ux product idea ui designer visual artist ux' snake oil who wants their game idea implemented.

Fixing broken game ideas is easy.

benihana• 13 years ago

Because obviously someone's title declares what he is capable of or likes doing. Because someone with a title that isn't 'hacker' instantly discredits his ability to hack. Obviously. Because people who didn't study CS can't be hackers, obviously. Because someone who does UI or UX can't hack backend things, obviously.

seivan3• 13 years ago

No because hen actually performed something that isn't subjective. The person in question fixed the software. It wasn't "Do this game idea I have". Not sure were you're getting at but I didn't study/finish CS.

I wasn't referring to the title, I was referring to the skillset and action performed. But whatever.

benzor• 13 years ago

Yes, and because we all know that no computer scientist has ever done anything unethical, obviously.

Kiro2• 13 years ago

Eventually these bogus titles will be a thing of the past and the successful tech companies will consist of 100% hackers.

seivan3• 13 years ago

It's not about titles, I edited to clear that out.

gagege3• 13 years ago

Fixing broken game ideas is easy.

Tell that to anyone who has actually tried to implement a fix for a broken game design. I'm not even talking about programmers. Game design is not trivial. That's why so many games these days are either Mario clones or Doom clones. We know those are a safe bet.

TylerE2• 13 years ago

Where are the Mario clones? I'd love some good Mario clones. Instead they all seem to be Double Dragon/Castlevania/Metroid clones

crimzonrayne• 13 years ago

"I like Mario, and I like Doom. LETS MAKE MARIO DOOM!" - The mindset I hear from so many game designers nowadays.

MWil• 13 years ago

I bet even he would be unable to get GTAIV to run smoothly on a computer built today

ZoFreX• 13 years ago

Not only does GTA IV run perfectly smoothly, but there are community patches to make it look jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Very similar story there to this one, actually.

rlx0x2• 13 years ago

bs. in case anyone wondered, GTA4 is the prime example of a shitty console port.

fragsworth2• 13 years ago

some people made up long reasons for why such a lock could be in place, I was irked. Someone was wrong on the internet, and it fell to me to set them straight.

The lock was in place because one reason: Their developers did not know how to do this in a short amount of time. Their estimate may have been 2-3 months (because they would need to learn how to do it properly), and management decided against the effort.

This shows how valuable a well-rounded team of developers can be "as an asset". If you only have one or two developers for very specific languages or platforms, their skillset is going to be very limited, and you're going to miss out on big opportunities.

Luc5• 13 years ago

Their developers did not know how to do this in a short amount of time. Their estimate may have been 2-3 months (because they would need to learn how to do it properly)

Eh, what? They're not idiots, they know how to change resolution. They just figured it wasn't possible to do a proper job in the time/budget for something low on the priority list, so they didn't do it. Game devs like to get paid for their work, too.

icebraining2• 13 years ago

It's not just changing the resolution, it's also fixing all everything that breaks in a game that was developed targeting a single resolution.

Coincoin• 13 years ago

Those fixes just change a few constant here and there. Any game programmer (or any programmer really) can do that with her eyes closed.

The real problem is QA, user interface elements and internationalization. QA will have to do a complete walkthrough for every resolution * language * FSAA * videocard combination possible. This is very long and expensive. There will be bugs and they will need to get fixed.

At the end they decided it was not worth it. Another company with different priorities might decide otherwise. But what I can certainly tell you is this was not due to limited knowledge from the staff.

Havoc• 13 years ago

He might not feel like doing this full time, but surely there is a market for this. i.e. A team that doesn't nothing but PC ports. I'd imagine similar issues would crop up every time so specialization might be possible.

BHSPitMonkey• 13 years ago

Companies hiring other companies to do ports is commonplace in the industry. Such companies aren't usually limited to doing only PC ports (sometimes it will be a company that also releases its own original games as well).

kosei• 13 years ago

Very cool. Tough, as often times it's a question of cost-benefit analysis and it's definitely possible the developer didn't feel it was a high priority enough issue (against other bugs, against shipping by a certain date, against other projects), so it's awesome that someone from the community could choose to fix the issue in their stead. Obviously not ideal, but very cool nevertheless.

beloch• 13 years ago

I am routinely amazed at the improvements the modding community makes even for games that are designed to be unfriendly to mods.

Take Mass Effect 3 for example. The game ships with Origin, which is EA's wannabe Steam online-store/community/DRM. The me3 executable is validated when origin starts up in an attempt to ensure that there's no way to play a modified version of the executable. Modders found a way around this that basically involves playing musical chairs with executable files, and proceeded to mod the heck out of the game from there. The game is not terribly friendly to mods so there's nothing like what you'll see for a game where a toolset has been released, but basic things like texture upgrades (and changes), unlocking and repurposing game assets, modifying weapons, unlocking the in-game console, etc.. (I'm a particular fan of enabling the flycam so you can fly around levels and see how they're built, dynamically loaded, and how they achieve optical effects).

Other games are more mod-friendly. Bethesda's games are one of the standard bearers, and stepping back into one of their games after a year or two can be a completely different experience with the right mods! There are mods that completely rework combat mechanics, add entirely new spell systems, total interface overhauls, you name it! If there's something you don't like about a Bethesda game, odds are you can completely replace it! This raises the replay value of their games tremendously, and all they have to do is release a devkit and be a little bit friendly!

Every once in a while, a botched and buggy game with tremendous potential will be buffed and polished by an obsessed modding community, revealing a classic that the developers were never given time to realize. Games like Troika's Vampire: Bloodlines or Obsidian Entertainment's KOTOR2 are still evolving online. I've been holding off replaying KOTOR2 for years because I know it just keeps getting closer to the game it was meant to be every year.

I'm rambling, but I really respect and love the PC modding community. It truly is something special, and I wish more game companies (EA, I'm looking at you!) would give it the respect (and cooperation) it deserves!

PetitPrince• 13 years ago

Every once in a while, a botched and buggy game with tremendous potential will be buffed and polished by an obsessed modding community, revealing a classic that the developers were never given time to realize. Games like Troika's Vampire: Bloodlines or Obsidian Entertainment's KOTOR2 are still evolving online. I've been holding off replaying KOTOR2 for years because I know it just keeps getting closer to the game it was meant to be every year.

A game that is worth mentioning here is Falcon 4. More than 10 years after its initial release people have (and are still ?) modding it. More info at https://sites.google.com/site/falcon4history/

platz• 13 years ago

I was addicted to falcon 4 only a few years ago. Its a wonderful sim that even ran great on my laptop. Learning all the radar modes really increases the feeling of realism.

Also there's a strange online community. The everyone is middle aged and some real pilots too.

groovy2shoes• 13 years ago

Has anyone released an me3 mod that fixes the ending? (No, I didn't like the official "fixed" ending, either).

cclogg• 13 years ago

I like what this guy is doing :)

I've personally stopped buying any game that is a port just because of past experiences lol. Also it's probably us PC gamers who have certain standards that are more demanding than consoles. An example is the feel of an FPS (half life and the like set that bar)... or just as in the article, the graphics settings.

I've actually been a bit sad lately, because I think the industry has changed so much in the last 10 years. The '95 to '05 run of PC games was awesome [1]... small to mid-sized companies churning out great stuff (especially in some of my favorite genres, like strategy). Then around 2004, I got engulfed in HL2 (+ mods) and WoW, and emerged a few years later to find quite a different PC games market. To me, it was basically now only Blizzard/Valve, with everyone else gone... or making the 'cool' games for console (I guess console gfx finally caught up). Good to see indie/kickstarter stuff lately though!

I miss the days when I would go into a random games store and find gems in the PC games aisle (and I'm not even that old). Last time I tried that it was basically all ports of console games and then the 25 WoW expansions lol.

[1] Some of my favorites from that time: Age of Empires/Mythology, NOLF, Blizz games, Unreal Tournament, Command & Conquer, Red Alert, Valve games, Battlefield, Dungeon Siege, Far Cry, Call of Duty 1, The Sims, Baldur's Gate, Quake... can't remember any more haha.

rlx0x2• 13 years ago

There are mods that fix some broken things, like all those mods that add widescreen support to older games, and it was skyUI that fixed the broken HUD of the shitty skyrim console-port.

Anyhow it is frustrating to see what the PC as a gaming platform has become, you have unoptimized, un-customizable, just awful console ports. Where the industry constantly rambles about the pirates, but at the same time are unwilling to invest in more quality assurance, that you need because of the wide variety of hardware configurations, instead they _just complain_ about the variety of pc hardware configurations (even carmack did it!), do nothing, ship broken buggy console ports that, on top of that, also include their borderline-rootkit DRM crap. Gee I wonder why people pirate their games?

Not that I particulary miss anything the big companies produce, stuff like <60fps/health-regenerating/gamepad-autoaim-controls/ etc.

So yes there mods that add higher resolutions to crappy console ports, whoop-dee-fucking-doo!

vacri• 13 years ago

I remember his fix from the Dark Souls PC release. The creators, From Software, basically announced "we have no experience in PC, this will be a direct port, and the quality is an unknown". They were quite up-front about it.

This bloke had a prediction about what was needed to fix the issue, and said he did a few hours prep work. Dark Souls was released, he confirmed that his prediction was correct, and it was only half an hour (from memory) between DS being released and Durante posting the first version of his fix. He continued to roll updates for a few weeks afterwards.

One bizarre thing was that all the art in the game was already hi-res. Nothing suffered for turning on the hi-res ability. It seems odd to me that art for console-locked resolutions would be made in hi-res and then displayed in low-res, rather than being designed for the target resolution in the first place.

Houshalter• 13 years ago

I don't play games much and when I do it's on a really shitty 14" standard def TV, so is 720p really that bad? I usually watch videos at that and it looks just fine.

ics• 13 years ago

Compared to 14" standard resolution no, it will not look any worse. You would definitely notice on a larger, higher resolution screen the minute you had something to compare it to though.

kshay• 13 years ago

I thought this would be about a fan (mechanical air-blowing device)... like, so effective that you could wildly overclock your machine or something. Disappointed.

arnoldwh• 13 years ago

“My primary motivation,” Thoman said, “is because I don’t like playing games at low resolution.”

I thought that quote was great. The modding community always amazes me for their frequent dedication without any kind of financial reward or recognition.

Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You

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