Oh the "use EGS to beta test the game" method. No wonder I'd never heard of it until last month
Community MetaSteam | March 2023 - You know, Wo Leon, we really are the last of March
- Thread starter Mor
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Thanks Mor for the thread.
So I've still been playing mostly on my Steam Deck. Just finished Ishin as was looking at playing Wo Long or Wild Hearts but technical issues so might skip those and try to clear my backlog. ORRRR I could get the Humble Bundle so I can get Gotham Knights and not clear my backlog. What to do...
Looking forward to RE4R and maybe TLOU this month if I'm feeling rich.
So I've still been playing mostly on my Steam Deck. Just finished Ishin as was looking at playing Wo Long or Wild Hearts but technical issues so might skip those and try to clear my backlog. ORRRR I could get the Humble Bundle so I can get Gotham Knights and not clear my backlog. What to do...
Looking forward to RE4R and maybe TLOU this month if I'm feeling rich.
The lack of details on the page makes me laugh. Gotta get that store page in before the race weekend starts. Maybe they'll announce more details at Bahrain?
Without having seen the linked video yet, one thing about EGS being a Marketing Black Hole: in the beginning, games didnt need marketing when they were announced as egsclusive. That fact alone automatically became news, and then the controversy did the rest. Everyone knew about Ooblets – because it was egsclusive. Was the game any good? Maybe, I dont know, but I know about the game because it was all over gaming news & discourse due to the egsclusivity - and the behaviour of the devs first treating potential costumers like little children (too dumb to click a different icon on the desktop) and then playing victim when receiving backlash to said behaviour. I dunno if it ever was a success or if the devs are even still around, but I sure knew about the game, and I sure remember it today. They did not need any marketing. That game, and a lot of other egsclusives got coverage simply by existing on that store.
At some point this stopped being enough as the number of games on the store grew, people stopped caring about egsclusives, and of course Steam being a stronger platform than ever. Games Ive played on Steam like Hitman 3 and Outer Worlds have been egsclusive at some point, but by now, that feels so long ago that it stopped mattering. the egs might as well not exist today for me.
I am sure devs take exclusive deals for various reasons – usually it'll be money, but I do think the added notoriety couldve easily been a contributing factor to some, especially smaller devs that knew their game needed notoriety to stand out in some way. Still havent forgotten about the way the Raw Fury community manager talked to people on Twitter. Still havent forgotten the arrogance displayed by Coffee Stain.
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Regarding giveaways: Yeah, it is a bit sad to see the same names winning lots of games a lot of the time and some never saying a thank you.
I like giving games, its a nice feeling knowing someone else is happy to get a new game! But its not great having a few people just hoard games, possibly taking away chances of those winning that really look forward to these games (and especially if its people that might not be able to afford games in a time when devs charge moon prices in poor countries).
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Hektor and online discourse; its way too broken these days, especially political discourse. People love to simplify, paint everything in black an white, Us vs. Them, my group/truth versus yours, my moral superiority versus yours, etc. It gives them sense of belonging, purpose, direction in an increasingly complex and difficult-to-understand world where it is hard to admit we're all flawed, none of us know everything (or even close to "a lot"). I think we might see a lot more of that still before it becomes any saner (if at all). People will probably just get more and more extreme in their thinking for a good while.
At some point this stopped being enough as the number of games on the store grew, people stopped caring about egsclusives, and of course Steam being a stronger platform than ever. Games Ive played on Steam like Hitman 3 and Outer Worlds have been egsclusive at some point, but by now, that feels so long ago that it stopped mattering. the egs might as well not exist today for me.
I am sure devs take exclusive deals for various reasons – usually it'll be money, but I do think the added notoriety couldve easily been a contributing factor to some, especially smaller devs that knew their game needed notoriety to stand out in some way. Still havent forgotten about the way the Raw Fury community manager talked to people on Twitter. Still havent forgotten the arrogance displayed by Coffee Stain.
~
Regarding giveaways: Yeah, it is a bit sad to see the same names winning lots of games a lot of the time and some never saying a thank you.
I like giving games, its a nice feeling knowing someone else is happy to get a new game! But its not great having a few people just hoard games, possibly taking away chances of those winning that really look forward to these games (and especially if its people that might not be able to afford games in a time when devs charge moon prices in poor countries).
~
Hektor and online discourse; its way too broken these days, especially political discourse. People love to simplify, paint everything in black an white, Us vs. Them, my group/truth versus yours, my moral superiority versus yours, etc. It gives them sense of belonging, purpose, direction in an increasingly complex and difficult-to-understand world where it is hard to admit we're all flawed, none of us know everything (or even close to "a lot"). I think we might see a lot more of that still before it becomes any saner (if at all). People will probably just get more and more extreme in their thinking for a good while.
It has freedom in the same sense any other non open world game has it. The sequence of sandboxes is always linear, the freedom lies in how many ways there are to complete each one, and in that sense DL has more options and gives the player more agency than Prey or DH2. Can't talk about Mooncrash as I didn't play it.
now listening to the video while playing games on Steam there was one interesting bit about discoverability: games on EGS go into the black hole while Steam will constantly be trying to surface stuff
yeah. because Valve built Steam FOR USERS....whearas the whole concept of the egs was from the getgo very anti-consumer: they basically told people: you dont know what we want. we know what you want. you dont want steam, you want these games. you want them on epic. our store looks neat. steamspy did all the number crunching. people on youtube said there was too many trash on steam, so we curate games for you. you dont need reviews, a workshop, a community or features. we know better than you. the people selling these games get more money from you and you should care about that. never mind that our engine stutters, you didnt see that.
i remember when epic took fortnite off the Google Play Store (before EGS) and brought forward all sorts of excuses while it was super easy to decipher the sole reason was just "we want more money"
and it is fascinating that it worked for some time, that people bought into the notion that costumers are basically shit and certain companies deserve more money than other companies when you buy a product.
but i guess a lot these people that cheered egs on probably wouldve engaged in a XBOX vs PS discussion too.
I bought games for my Switch for the first time in over a year+. Got Metroid Prime Remaster and Witch on the Holy Night (and pre-ordered Zelda).
Turns out the last game played on my Switch before the Steam Deck made it obsolete was Metroid Dread.
Witch on the Holy Night PC port possibility is high now, as the last time I bought multiple Switch games all if them (except Metroid of course) got unexpected PC ports soon after (Neo TWEWY and Bravely Default 2).
Turns out the last game played on my Switch before the Steam Deck made it obsolete was Metroid Dread.
Witch on the Holy Night PC port possibility is high now, as the last time I bought multiple Switch games all if them (except Metroid of course) got unexpected PC ports soon after (Neo TWEWY and Bravely Default 2).
That sucks. You should always thank the person that was generous enough to give their keys away.Gave away 8 games last week, didn't get a single "thank you" from any of the winners. I guess I won't tick the "allow juniors" checkbox next time.
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I am pretty cold for Wo Long.
The Nioh games both started off so good and I had lots of fun early on but they ended being so difficult that I did not finish either game in the end. Nioh 1 I despaired at the end boss, Nioh 2 I dropped like 25 hours in.
I'm violently torn on Wo Long. It's too hard for me as soon as the first boss, but I'm also a real bitch for good souls games, and the reviews are good.
But yeah, you don't want to ask me to push a button on time with anything
But yeah, you don't want to ask me to push a button on time with anything
I put off playing Days Gone due to its length, as I generally want to play shorter games, but damn, I'm loving it. I think I'm actually getting somewhat close to the end of the main story as well, though I could be wrong. Anyways, I figured I would tire of this large open world but surprisingly, I have not! It's a beautiful game, has some surprisingly decent and well-acted characters, and is a ton of fun to play. FUCK THEM HORDES THO
135€ for a game I can't understand is a bit eeh, but I love to support your work so I'll probably get it this weekend and sit on it for a year or so lol (Still waiting on Nayuta's english patchBasically. When you are in the graphics setting menu you can hit a key to fade out all the menu and UI except for the current setting, and directly see its impact in the scene you are currently at.
Looks like this:
). Also if I may ask, since you do the most "communication" for PH3 port, are you the only one working on these ports? Either way, you/you guys are a straight up beast/s. It's just the funniest thing ever that a game series with this kind of mid popularity gets top tier ports. Really shows how much you care about the craft of making excellent ports.(PS. still mad that NISA won't include the Vita DLC in Ys VIII)
Same here for Nioh 2 with me. I got to a point where it was mob after mob, and I just got sick of it. The game was great otherwise, but doubt I'll ever finish it. It's strange how some games can be really difficult or punishing but feel rewarding and meditative, while others just feel straight up unfun. Not sure exactly how to explain the difference.
Figment is free to grab. Make sure to get it if you don't have it. It's cool.
Many people argue that Steam and EGS are just launchers, but I myself don't see Steam as a launcher but as a platform. It basically gives you a multitude of features, many of which are similar to those on consoles, the difference compared to a console platform is that you can navigate it with a mouse and you can minimize it to do other things on your PC. EGS on the other hand is just a storefront with a launcher, nothing else. It's bare bones. It doesn't give me any incentive to buy games there.
Tends to be the rate of progress. Usually getting stuck for a while on a boss is fine, but when every enemy is a chore to fight it's not so fun (and in Nioh fairly quickly you're likely to just avoid unnecessary encounters to keep ressources).
Does Wo Long offer any accessibility options to tone down the difficulty?
Souls games are the prime exemple of a genre that need some but obstinately refuses to add any...
I really don't like to "trash" indie games but damn did Raji an Ancient Epic disappointed me. Absolutely awful combat was driving me insane. They tied movement and aiming to the same stick and on top of that made attacks unresponsive as hell while they made enemies move fast and basically can stunlock you. Absolutely awful experience. And that frustration culminated with final boss. I haven't played game that frustrated me this much in a loooooooong while. And to make things worse payoff for going through that much frustration was basically ending that is confusing as hell and feel unfinished.
I really had high hopes for this game and cheered for its success but it really is bad game.
I really had high hopes for this game and cheered for its success but it really is bad game.
A bit late to the party for the roguelike discussion but I love them. I think that roguelikes/roguelites and survival games have given indie games the ability to compete head-on with AAA in terms of gameplay length and value for money. It used to be that most indie games were bite-sized experiences compared to the average length of a big game, now you can buy a roguelite and get tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay.
And one other thing I really like about roguelikes: It's almost all gameplay, no prolonged 'cinematic' cutscenes or other AAA trappings.
And one other thing I really like about roguelikes: It's almost all gameplay, no prolonged 'cinematic' cutscenes or other AAA trappings.
Well buy it no... but play them for sureCould you also buy SMTV, Live A Live, and Rain Code then please?
even Valve promoted it on the first Deck ad. XD
As someone who absolutely loves good roguelikes I completely agree. Oftentimes, it feels tacked on and is not as well done as it could be if they really went all out to make a great one. I think devs look at it as a way to extend playtime, but a lot of them just end up feeling like crappy padding. Roguelites can be an even worse offender because they tend to be built with forced progression is mind so no matter how good you are it is almost impossible to finish a complete run until you get more "progression" unlocks. Just make a good, shorter game and I will still play it, not everything needs to be based around runs.
I like some, I dislike some but in the end, I don't care THAT much how much a market is oversaturated as long as the whole market is healthy.
Would I like more indie games that cater to my tastes that have nothing to do with roguelikes? Yes, but I also know that some of these niche genres where i would like more games, are also very hard to get right, to get enough of an audience to make it viable, or are very dependent on having the right person doing their magic what a million other people cant do.
And as always: If I have to "suffer" 1000 mediocre/bad games but get a masterpiece or two with it, then I don't care that the other games also exist.
Not at all! By now PH3 is an absolutely massive company totaling a staggering 6 members, of which 4 mostly work on game ports, and 2 of those are even full time (me not among them)
Jokes aside, for the Crossbell games, the majority of the work was not actually done by me but by our employees. I did do quite a few things myself, including the whole map texture upscaling pipeline, the dynamic shadowing and water, and some important performance optimization, but the majority of the overall porting work was done by others. Specifically, I didn't work on the Switch versions at all -- well, except for the fact that the general performance optimization I did was primarily motivated by getting it to run at a consistent 60 FPS in 99.5% of the game on Switch rather than just 95%.
I did a larger part of the work on Kuro. Basically everything that has to do with the graphics options (except aspect ratio), as well as asset storage / compression of course, and media playback. Others did input handling, all the custom UI, storefront support, ultrawide, and more.
Honestly, I'd like to see a survival horror game with rougelike elements. Playing Resident Evil 2 Remake really made the appeal tick for me. For example, I think a hypothetical Death end re;Quest 3 would benefit quite a bit from some Resident Evil and rougelike mechanics (for story reasons). I've been wanting a rhythm action game for years, and I'm kind of stoked that HiFi Rush managed to fill that void.
But yeah, I've played a bit of Dead Cells, Hades, and The Binding of Isaac to know that rougelike mechanics have to be handled delicately in a similar vein to procedural generation, they often can be abused for marketing or to create artificial replay value. Same for Metroidvania and Soulsborne mechanics.
I think the reason I’m invested solely in PC is because of Steam.
Just imagining a hypothetical PC landscape where it’s just Epic, Uplay, Origin, and the other launchers - I honestly don’t think I’d bother with PC.
Oh, quite the big boss now huh?Not at all! By now PH3 is an absolutely massive company totaling a staggering 6 members, of which 4 mostly work on game ports, and 2 of those are even full time (me not among them)
Jokes aside, for the Crossbell games, the majority of the work was not actually done by me but by our employees. I did do quite a few things myself, including the whole map texture upscaling pipeline, the dynamic shadowing and water, and some important performance optimization, but the majority of the overall porting work was done by others. Specifically, I didn't work on the Switch versions at all -- well, except for the fact that the general performance optimization I did was primarily motivated by getting it to run at a consistent 60 FPS in 99.5% of the game on Switch rather than just 95%.
I did a larger part of the work on Kuro. Basically everything that has to do with the graphics options (except aspect ratio), as well as asset storage / compression of course, and media playback. Others did input handling, all the custom UI, storefront support, ultrawide, and more.
I kinda would've thought so since the ports are so massive in scope! Also news to me that you're actually handling the Switch ports too, since I know Engine Software did some of the Switch ports of games you worked on before. You have a great team, keep on rockin, don't let the ports come stoppin (or something, I don't know)! 
This is basically where I stand with roguelikes. These days most roguelikes I see are less about having a vision for the game and more about cutting costs and inflating game time. It's gotten to the point where I'm just too tired to bother, so unless there's some huge word of mouth like Hades if I see a "roguelite" anywhere on the store page that's an instant ignore.
Yeah, the thing is that Valve has actually put in quite a bit of effort to make controller support on PC far less of a pain than it used to be. Plus it's generally easier to authenticate a game for corrupted game files compared to the other launchers. Plus the Steam Deck has standardized resolution scaling and framerate limiter options, and Steam's Big Picture is the only tenfoot interface on PC that comes close to console functionality and polish.
I end up using Heroic Games Launcher (Which is also available on Windows) to get controllers working on EGS games without needing third-party drivers, as the non-steam shortcut solution to the game executable has the potential of not working if it requires launching the game through the launcher itself. Plus being able to launch the game with a controller without opening anything else is nice.
If you ask me, Microsoft hasn't done enough for gaming on Windows, and they should really be bundled in with Epic/EA/Ubisoft/Blizzard, There's still plenty of areas where stuff is substandard and quite honestly has been neglected where it isn't an issue anywhere else (Getting Bluetooth to work with the full features of a DualShock 4/DualSense controller or DualShock 3 controllers in general, making Winget the standard for software installs instead of having to spend five hours on Google because software distribution is more of a wild west than Minecraft mods, overhauling TV and controller support to work better, and offering a setting for per-game resolution and scaling profiles are the things I'd say needs the most work). There's actually a pretty good reason that the complaints about the Steam Deck having a 16:10 screen vanished when people got their hands on it, and that's down to how scaling is handled. I had to spend an entire day doing Windows related tweaks to my ITX setup to make it tolerable to use on a TV without a keyboard and mouse. People simply give them credit for not messing up as badly compared to the Games for Windows Live era. If not for Valve, things would probably be far worse and nowhere as big as it is.
My main issue with buying a console at this point is how hit or miss backwards compatibility is (Kind of nuts that Microsoft couldn't get Brute Force and other games on their back compat system, and Sony has yet to do proper PS1/PS2/PS3 back compat on the PS5), the cost of an online sub over several years even to have the privilege of cloud saves (this isn't a problem on Xbox/Steam/EGS, but Sony and Nintendo charges for it), and the fact that I already have a library of around 800 games or so (and it would be ridiculous to just leave that hanging). I remember when I was a kid not having much to play on my consoles, so I got bored moving around the system menus to figure out what to do, and part of that is why I ended up moving over. Kind of already find it a bit of a pain to transfer my Yuzu emulator saves back and forth between my system. Partially why I personally found it a better idea to buy an ITX rig rather than a PS5 at the moment (Although my plans are to buy one when homebrew works, and you can get things like the Bloodborne 60FPS patch working).
With the GPU market the way it is, a few years ago I was thinking it would've been neat for Microsoft to add a desktop mode to the Series X, but at this point, I see the idea of Valve reviving the Steam Machine concept with their own in-house hardware and priced okay or subsidized (Ideally, something that can match current-gen consoles performance wise) more likely.
Spoiler tagged most of the quotations for those that don't want extra explanation on things, mainly to make things easier on the eyes. I'm generally bad at communicating things in a brief manner.
Reason: Some more clairifaction regarding winget
Looks like valve's alien swarm in roguelike form, I'm not convinced by the video.
There's a maintained mod of the original to grab for free which is fun to boot
Oh, quite the big boss now huh?
Valve's Alien Swarm wasn't that good (hence it was free, felt like an abandoned project that was once gonna be expanded on but it wasn't meant to be more than anything else), folks should hunt down the original UT2004 mod Alien Swarm and some of the extra campaigns released for it, now that was really ace.
Just happened to be at the end of Returnal and Evil West this week so knocked those both out.
Evil West is a dumb game that I'm pretty sure knows it's a dumb game, and just goes for it. I have to say, I wasn't feeling it in the middle of the game - enemies just had tons of health, wasn't getting much in the way of upgrades or tools, pretty much just having to push through damage sponge room after damage sponge room. The last 1/4(?) or so of the game really gets back into the grove though. You get a ton more tools and can absolutely go nuts in fights, even dealing with 3 enemies that were bosses at the same time without that much strain. The other big negative was the block system was ambiguous as best, you basically had to experiment to see if something could be blocked, but even then it only really works if you time it right. It's way way better to just not even bother and dodge or something else 99% of the time. Overall pretty good, a competent occasionally tedious on-the-rails brawler.
Returnal is mostly fantastic. I've cleared every biome (in the base game, not DLC) a bunch of times at this point, and just have a couple little things to find for achievements. The flow of the game is great, you can rush through if you want to just push your luck, or take your time and explore and backtrack to maximize your resources. The weapons are rather distinct and the weapon mods make the weapons even more distinct from themselves as well. Higher tier mods take way way too long to unlock, in my opinion, though - entire biomes or more. The boss fights are all epic, the sound design is incredible (I was utilizing audio cues I didn't even know I was hearing), the difficulty is high but almost always feels fair once you understand the game (mostly dodge, sometimes jump, never walk straight forward or backwards). My main complaint is that it's hard to recommend it because there is absolutely no difficulty adjustment at all - either you just play the game as-is and focus it down and learn and don't take long breaks, or you don't get through it. There's effectively no meta-upgrades as well so some people that chip away and roguelites when the difficulty is high to start won't find that path here.
It needs some optimization, and they need a patch to address the crashes people are having (I never did, but I haven't played coop, used HDR, or the pylon weapon, but maybe also just lucky). It's a shame they don't have something even as basic as Hades' god mode so the game would be an easy recommend, as it is I don't think I know anyone IRL I could recommend it to unless I try to carry them through coop.
Evil West is a dumb game that I'm pretty sure knows it's a dumb game, and just goes for it. I have to say, I wasn't feeling it in the middle of the game - enemies just had tons of health, wasn't getting much in the way of upgrades or tools, pretty much just having to push through damage sponge room after damage sponge room. The last 1/4(?) or so of the game really gets back into the grove though. You get a ton more tools and can absolutely go nuts in fights, even dealing with 3 enemies that were bosses at the same time without that much strain. The other big negative was the block system was ambiguous as best, you basically had to experiment to see if something could be blocked, but even then it only really works if you time it right. It's way way better to just not even bother and dodge or something else 99% of the time. Overall pretty good, a competent occasionally tedious on-the-rails brawler.
Returnal is mostly fantastic. I've cleared every biome (in the base game, not DLC) a bunch of times at this point, and just have a couple little things to find for achievements. The flow of the game is great, you can rush through if you want to just push your luck, or take your time and explore and backtrack to maximize your resources. The weapons are rather distinct and the weapon mods make the weapons even more distinct from themselves as well. Higher tier mods take way way too long to unlock, in my opinion, though - entire biomes or more. The boss fights are all epic, the sound design is incredible (I was utilizing audio cues I didn't even know I was hearing), the difficulty is high but almost always feels fair once you understand the game (mostly dodge, sometimes jump, never walk straight forward or backwards). My main complaint is that it's hard to recommend it because there is absolutely no difficulty adjustment at all - either you just play the game as-is and focus it down and learn and don't take long breaks, or you don't get through it. There's effectively no meta-upgrades as well so some people that chip away and roguelites when the difficulty is high to start won't find that path here.
It needs some optimization, and they need a patch to address the crashes people are having (I never did, but I haven't played coop, used HDR, or the pylon weapon, but maybe also just lucky). It's a shame they don't have something even as basic as Hades' god mode so the game would be an easy recommend, as it is I don't think I know anyone IRL I could recommend it to unless I try to carry them through coop.
Giveaway
Hello, I'm the Giveaway Bot! TioChuck is giving away 7 gift(s).
This giveaway is a raffle and will be closed after Mar 3, 2023 at 11:45 AM. A winner is chosen randomly with the key delivered via a PM.
Codes are Humble Bundle Gift links.
The raffle has ended.
The following games are being given away:
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- Ghostrunner
- won by FunnyJay
- (10 entries)
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- PAYDAY 2
- (0 entries)
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- System Shock Enhanced Edition
- won by FunnyJay
- (2 entries)
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- System Shock 2
- (0 entries)
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- Calico
- won by Madventure
- (2 entries)
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- Monaco
- (0 entries)
Yeah, from what I played of Returnal, it's a fun game. The gameplay loop is really fun, it feels okay to play on a controller, I really dig the environment art, the audio implementation in the game is pretty nuts (raytraced audio with Dolby Atmos on headphones probably makes it the best sounding game I've had the chance to check out), and the DualSense implementation is really good (I like the adaptive triggers, speaker sounds, and haptic feedback).
It's also the rare exception of a Unreal Engine PC port that feels like it shipped feature complete. They just need to patch the stuttering problems with loading into new areas now (Something which is also an issue on PS5), and then the port is great. But to be honest, it seems like most Unreal Engine games I've played in the past few years had some form of hitching when moving into new areas (Final Fantasy VII Remake (even in DX11 mode), SpongeBob: The Cosmic Shake, and Hogwarts Legacy (despite everything else in that PC port being fantastic) are all recent examples of this). I'm definitely hoping the woes with the Sackboy and Returnal releases doesn't stop Sony from releasing more of their games, as the big thing keeping me from playing more is the lack of an FSR 2 mode in Sackboy (So I can use it in conjunction with raytracing), and the stuttering that I mentioned in Returnal. Been Family Sharing to play HWL, and I'm just holding off on more optimization patches and the centered third-person mod to be polished more.
I wouldn't be playing on PC if it weren't for Steam. Back in the day when I mainly played on consoles, but also had a PC for certain games like Crysis, Age of Conan, AoE 2 and WoW, I didn't enjoy PC gaming.
Looking for patched one after the other on those shady sites that often led me to porn and malware was exhausting. Download games on EA Downloaded felt awful. I didn't actually know what to use to play games and tried different things.
I remember downloading Dark Souls and used at least 6 hours on a saturday to get my Xbox 360 controller working with it and it still didn't properly work. I was super tired and extremely annoyed.
Steam made playing games on PC extremely easy, convenient and centralized without much of a cost (online paywall) to the point that I rebought games I had on consoles.
So every time someone said they wish PC gaming was like back in the old days Im like
Im not sacrificing the freedom and convenience of PC gaming today for some stuttering in games.
Looking for patched one after the other on those shady sites that often led me to porn and malware was exhausting. Download games on EA Downloaded felt awful. I didn't actually know what to use to play games and tried different things.
I remember downloading Dark Souls and used at least 6 hours on a saturday to get my Xbox 360 controller working with it and it still didn't properly work. I was super tired and extremely annoyed.
Steam made playing games on PC extremely easy, convenient and centralized without much of a cost (online paywall) to the point that I rebought games I had on consoles.
So every time someone said they wish PC gaming was like back in the old days Im like
Im not sacrificing the freedom and convenience of PC gaming today for some stuttering in games.
With the way stuttering seems to be a plague with every single modern AAA game, I’m hoping Valve brings back a single configuration of Steam Machine so that developers can optimize specifically for it.
What's up beautiful people of MC?
I wanted to ask you something. I bought the Turkey/Syria Humble Bundle but ended up with a bunch of games that I hadn't heard of before lmao (Only knew Gotham Knights, Xcom 2, and Ghostrunner lol). Have you played any of the games in that bundle? Which one would you recommend? lol.
I wanted to ask you something. I bought the Turkey/Syria Humble Bundle but ended up with a bunch of games that I hadn't heard of before lmao (Only knew Gotham Knights, Xcom 2, and Ghostrunner lol). Have you played any of the games in that bundle? Which one would you recommend? lol.
Build your own Platinum Collection - May 2024 | Fanatical
www.fanatical.com
A lot of first time in a bundle games.
Fable was announced in 2020 and eurogamer leaked its existence back in late 2017.
Everwild was announced in 2019 and is "not close".
Perfect Dark was announced in 2020 but had to be rebooted after the new studio they made collapsed and they had to bring in crystal dynamics (and latest story is they are also struggling on it)
Hellblade 2 was announced alongside the series x in 2019 and it seems like it won't be out until next year.
...I'm starting to think xbox studios may not be the most well managed studios out there.
Yeah... This is why I've been hiding my give-aways behind post counts. I've got nothing against the good juniors, but I've gotten a bit sick of the few juniors that do hang around and exist solely to swoop up codes while contributing nothing to this community.Gave away 8 games last week, didn't get a single "thank you" from any of the winners. I guess I won't tick the "allow juniors" checkbox next time.
Thanks for the heads up.Build your own Platinum Collection - May 2024 | Fanatical
A lot of first time in a bundle games.
Grabbing all this for $15 is pretty nice!!
Feel free to correct things that I say, but here's my beef with the idea of optimization being easier on a single set of hardware. The optimization process of a port, from what I've seen, and from my own experience with licensed game engines and modding existing games, comes down to engineering systems that scale properly with different sets of hardware. Whether that's related to UI/Resolution/Aspect Ratio stuff, arbitrary framerates, controller support, or scalability settings. A lot of that can be advocated for, That's a majority of the stuff that the user is going to reasonably see and interact with. The way that I've seen some illiterate groups explain it, they think it consists of boolean statements for every hardware combination imaginable, which would be unsustainable for many reasons. Some games that I've seen where patches fixed problems with certain sets of GPU drivers mostly consist of workarounds or addressing illegal uses of API calls. There are some scenarios where users without updated drivers can introduce stability problems (Intel iGPUs are especially infamous for this), but that can be resolved. There's system requirements (Usually targeting console specifications) for a reason, and I've always made it a point to keep all of my software on the bleeding edge. Low Level APIs like DX12 and Vulkan generally require far more work and optimization, but that comes with the territory of not having GPU drivers manage a lot of that for you. There was an NVIDIA driver engineer a bit ago that wrote an article on the work that goes into maintaining GPU drivers (Workarounds for specific games primarily), and how DX12/Vulkan/Mantle would be a good solution for avoiding this problem, but considering game releases as of late having flawed DX12 and Vulkan implementations, and DX12/Vulkan games still getting workarounds and optimizations in Game Ready Drivers, I do think that having that extra control comes with exceedingly great responsibilities, most (outside of iD Software) are seemingly not ready to handle. Even consoles like the Switch and the PS4 have higher-level APIs that developers can opt to use instead (Super Mario 3D AllStars uses varying levels depending on the game, and PlayStation 4 has both GNM and GNMX).
Web development has become a bit of a meme in programming communities because of memes of web developers having many different devices (phones, tablets, laptops, etc) that they can test things on to ensure compatibility. Some web browsers even have tools to spoof the user agent to view how sites appear in a WYSIWYG manner. There's tools in both Unity and Unreal that allow you to test certain scenarios (alongside performance profiling tools), and they seem like they're hilariously under-utilized. For example, I've seen some Unity games where there was noticeable GPU utilization issues that really could have been narrowed down given that profilers and standard engine subsystems were used. For example, in one game that I've done some modding work on, the problem with doing level design in a 3D modeling software like Maya or 3DS Max is that you don't really have control over stuff like grass density like the standard systems available in Unity, and have to implement that stuff manually, otherwise a ton of grass meshes will be rendered and tank performance, or high utilization for 2D rendered stuff (Something which was actually a problem with Final Fantasy 13 for a while, the game ran notably better when you disabled the minimap). Weird discrepancies and oversights like that could've been investigated, but at least on the Steam Deck, the 40Hz refresh rate option makes it stutter less.
In terms of low-level issues, it's hard for the average user to put their finger on the pulse. For example, games like Sonic Frontiers and Project DIVA MegaMix had stuttering (and in the case of MegaMix, audio desync issues) that were blamed on Denuvo (from people that have no experience looking into issues with games), but it turns out that patching out a poor framerate limiter using Cheat Engine was not that difficult to do (Unless there's other underlying logic that needs to be investigated) and actually fixed the issue for plenty of other players. Arkham Knight's situation has been improved quite a bit when a texture caching system got implemented for example. Unless it's a low-level engine issue, the console versions of games more often than not have similar issues when it comes to how fast underlying gameplay logic is. Games are generally single-threaded outside of scenarios that need more performance, because multithreading is actually pretty challenging.
Steam's Shader Caching system works pretty well on Linux with standard PC hardware. Final Fantasy VII Remake didn't have egregious shader compilation stutter in Proton even outside of the Steam Deck, and the same goes for Elden Ring. I don't think it's necessarily an issue with hardware targets.
I think it's moreover releases being rushed out the door, or having crucial oversights that passed QC. A lot of that comes down to management issues, time constraints, or both. Arkham Knight was infamous on PC at launch, but a lot of the issues with the release were fixed using a texture caching system, and it was used primarily by fanboys without any sort development experience to perpetuate misinformation that's grossly simplified to the point where it doesn't actually point out why it happened. Final Fantasy XV had massive stuttering issues that were not engine or Denuvo related, but due to redundant polling of Steamworks API calls (Special K actually helped with this). Resident Evil Village and Monster Hunter World had a ton of anti-debugging calls in certain portions of the game that were not present in the demo release of the game. Going back to MHW specifically, after refunding it, and then buying it during a sale (and having better hardware of course) was a completely different experience than what I remember at launch, same for FFXV.
But at this point, I feel like it's not a matter of software piracy (Horizon Zero Dawn shipped without DRM combined seeds+leeches on one of the most popular piracy sites was 1/10th of the concurrent playerbase on Steam), sales (More often than not, you see PC sales making up a sizable amount of Ubisoft and Square Enix's income equivalent with their PlayStation releases nowadays), or the potential playerbase (90+M concurrent monthly users on Steam is a number, and while there's people that claim there's a bot problem, from my anectdotal experience, I've had more encounters with botted catfish accounts on PSN). There's genuinely a problem with bad launches of games selling regardless, whether that's due to:
- Name Recognition (Pokemon is a prime example of this)
- People genuinely being too far into the r/PatientGamers or "Never Preorder" mindset that they fail to aknowledge that modders fixing problems always isn't a given especially in less large playerbases (It feels more like an obligation rather than something being done from my own enthusiasm), and the lack of constructive and specific user feedback at launch can in fact result in game releases being neglected. More often than not, games won't get updates and patches past launch, and with certain publishers, certain feedback arrives when it's too late to negotiate a solution for. At the same time, simply chosing to vote with your wallet has the risk of game publishers dropping support for a platform outright, which is why it's not exactly a black and white solution that fixes everything.
- Different spaces in the PC gaming community having lower standards than others (Literally any Japanese RPG playerbase comes to mind, you'll get accused of award farming and get abuse hurled at you if you dare to bring up issues with those games, and they'll literally buy anything regardless of quality if censorship changes are walked back in patches). The First Person Shooter, Western AAA, and MMO segments are generally more unforgiving. I personally feel like the gaming and PC gaming communities on Reddit are becoming worse as time goes on, especially in regards to awareness around such things.
But I'd moreover say that some of the situation could also be down to game engine and API documentation needing work or being more communicative, and a lot of other factors (some of which I mentioned here). There's a difference between those that simply don't care or don't have the time to investigate things in-depth, and someone that tries to look into things while finding what works and doesn't work with other games from experience. I do think that some publishers could definitely do with consulting an outside source though. I did discuss this topic with a friend who does programming for a living, and they told me there's definitely a difference between someone having to refactor a system put together 16 months ago and someone who is both passionate and an optimization freak. I'm generally one to notice patterns with how things are approached, where others may not.
Personally, I'm tired of having to whip out debug and development related tools to fix issues with recently released games, and I've gotten burned out from doing that. It's genuinely refreshing when I see a current release that's polished in a similar way that games used to be, and any game that doesn't require mods to fix absolutely deserves a round of applause and success. People generally understate how much bad UX can absolutely affect an otherwise great game, online discourse around Sonic Adventure thanks to the DX release and the let's players that play them is a prime example of that.
Now for my opinion, with a bit from my own personal experience, I honestly think that being vocal (but educated and constructive) about problems, not expecting modders to save the day, and "being the change you want to see" are the only way that I'm going to see things change at this rate. Also, despite how many people tell me "I'm doing god's work", whether that's down to modding games or leaving detailed reviews on games, neither of those (especially modding games, but buying recent game releases count as a loss) does not pay bills, most people sadly aren't willing to donate. I've worked on mods for hundreds of hours, and spent a lot of time simply problem solving and writing code, all without any sort of financial compensation. I've always been one for trying to aim for something that I can chip away at, rather than starting small, but that's a double edged sword. I've been needing to pick up work again on a few of my mods, but mental health (ADHD, panic attacks, and depression primarily), real-life, and burnout has genuinely gotten in the way of me finishing what I started. I'm left at a roadblock on what to do next, especially with my degree yet to be finished due to a lot of that, so I can't just apply for something without any professional experience, I'm absolutely aware that there's some stuff that I still don't have a grasp on, but I'm at least willing to be humble and honest about it. I also spend a lot of time actually writing and articulating my thoughts on things, even if it seems insignificant or mundane in the scale of things, but I guess that comes from not wanting to be misunderstood.
Reason: Added a few sentences towards the end that I forgot about, for clarification.
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Or theyre managed quite well if the teams arent crunching and are setting realistic targets.
Schreier has said in the past delays and longer times don't usually equal less crunching it just means they're crunching for longer periods. That's not to say these studios are crunching, I have no idea.
However most of the games I mentioned have had reports of varying levels of trouble like directors or other key talent leaving, rebooting the game entirely (avowed also reportedly fits under this category) or having problems with the engines they're using and that does not signify healthy development going on. Several games including everwild and state of decay 3 MS announced at the very beginning of their development. When the former was announced Rare had no idea what they even wanted the game to be yet and in the years since have rebooted the game and also replaced leads, and with SOD3 undead labs wrote the next day that they had just started pre-production meaning they basically announced the game as soon as MS greenlit the project lol.
Don't forget State of Decay 3. They showed that cool snowy hunting trailer and nothing since.
You can throw in Avowed as well.
Unless its Gears, Forza or Halo...Its seems Xbox has never been able to release shit on proper time. And even Halo now struggles.
As long as they don't pull another E3 2014 were they almost cancelled everything they showed it will be fine. They need to properly align everything with Gamepass. I think that has been the hardest thing for them but this year so far has been great. Every month of the year has a big new title scheduled through June so its starting to actually feel like they are hitting their stride as Netflix of gaming.
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