PC Gaming, General & Off Topic Chat

iLikeWaffles · 23-09-2020 3:47pm

very excited is probably more accurate, very annoying!

Skerries · 24-09-2020 9:23am

I really like this case theme

Retr0gamer · 24-09-2020 12:00pm

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Can someone explain what the memes about the new nVidia card are about? I don't really get them.

I was going to make a 3090 joke.

But you wouldn't get it.

I'm here all night.

Unfortunately.

TheDoc · 24-09-2020 4:41pm

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Can someone explain what the memes about the new nVidia card are about? I don't really get them.

As with a number of recent Nvidia card launches, not enough supply to meet demand, and there are scalpers who hoovered up a lot of the first wave to sell online again for crazy money.

Gbear · 24-09-2020 4:47pm

Might be good for AMD. I think they're launching their next range next month, and if they're the only cards that can be got, then the almost guaranteed inferiority of their cards mightn't matter as much.

CastorTroy · 25-09-2020 7:26pm

https://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/1309477819261620225

It was rumoured/leaked earlier but MGS 1 and 2 are now available

Robert ninja · 25-09-2020 7:36pm

The reviews are stating it's a bad port. There's also no goodies or manuals given like a lot of other GOG titles have... which is actually important for MGS1 because of the codec call that tells you to check the case. I'll be skipping this one. What a shame.

Skerries · 25-09-2020 7:56pm

CastorTroy · 25-09-2020 9:52pm

Robert ninja wrote: »

The reviews are stating it's a bad port. There's also no goodies or manuals given like a lot of other GOG titles have... which is actually important for MGS1 because of the codec call that tells you to check the case. I'll be skipping this one. What a shame.

Jut googled how to find the code and it was pointed out that it's one of the screenshots posted. Though I doubt they changed it to say that.

Robert ninja · 26-09-2020 8:30am

CastorTroy wrote: »

Jut googled how to find the code and it was pointed out that it's one of the screenshots posted. Though I doubt they changed it to say that.

Being a bad port is more my concern. Users are recommending fan patches. Not something I'd expect for a modern release. As for the the case and code... it's a minor thing but I expected higher standards from GOG. Just look at this Legend of Grimrock stuff I got:

Lots of games on there have old manuals that are a joy to look through. The blank map is insane for hardcore runs of LOG. Then again this might not be GOG's responsibility. Konami probably putting in absolutely no effort with their IPs as usual.

CastorTroy · 26-09-2020 10:23am

Oh I'm not defending it.
Though isn't GoG's thing that they take older games and get them working on pc without changing the game? So they use the original PC version instead of doing a port.
They probably are aware of fan patches but they probably can't use them or link them.
Have they ever released a game that was never on pc?

ancapailldorcha · 26-09-2020 10:30am

I never picked up the Devil May Cry HD collection as the third game is a notoriously horrid PC port. I'll probably leave this as well. If there are fan patches then it stands to reason that someone could either have incorporated them or fixed the game themselves before dumping it on GOG. Poor form on GOG's part IMO.

CastorTroy · 26-09-2020 12:55pm

I'd say fan patches can be problematic for an official release. Likely would need to be reimbursed/credited. Then some patches are done as a community or at least built on an existing fan patch, so that would need to be addressed.
And as we all know, you can't keep everyone happy. What you may think is a great patch, someone else may think ruins the game.
I guess this way it gives people the base game and lets them search out whatever patches they want.
I suppose the question is will those patches work on this version of the game?

ancapailldorcha · 26-09-2020 1:22pm

CastorTroy wrote: »

I'd say fan patches can be problematic for an official release. Likely would need to be reimbursed/credited. Then some patches are done as a community or at least built on an existing fan patch, so that would need to be addressed.
And as we all know, you can't keep everyone happy. What you may think is a great patch, someone else may think ruins the game.
I guess this way it gives people the base game and lets them search out whatever patches they want.
I suppose the question is will those patches work on this version of the game?

It's not about keeping everyone happy as that's impossible. It's about releasing games in a reasonable state that's fit-for-purpose. Having to download fan patches to fix major issues qualifies as legitimate grounds for complaint IMO.

I'm disappointed in GOG frankly. I'd expect this of Steam but I thought GOG were a bit more conscientious about what they put on their store.

Robert ninja · 26-09-2020 2:12pm

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I'm disappointed in GOG frankly. I'd expect this of Steam but I thought GOG were a bit more conscientious about what they put on their store.

I've been disillusioned with GOG the last few years. I actually emailed a studio about a game they had listed there that I owned (I had questions about encoding on the included soundtrack and linux support). Their response was sobering. Apparently GOG were the worst company they've ever worked with and pushing updates was a nightmare. This seemed to be the case because I contacted a 2nd studio about a different game not receiving a major update to it. They replied to me on feckin' steam and gave me a steam key where it had the update.

:D

This isn't a new thing either, they used to have user-made lists that they nuked/censored which exposed games with problems unique to GOG. These things along with Galaxy platform choices, NVIDIA and Microsoft favoritism and the whole firing staff because of twitter mobs turned me right off them. I own 140~ games there but I'm not likely to ever buy from them directly again. If by some miracle Cyberpunk can run on my system I'll be playing it on Steam.

CastorTroy · 26-09-2020 3:26pm

Think my GoG library only consists of a couple game collections I purchased on sale. everything else was free.
I won't be buying MGS but was just giving possible reasons for the version they're giving.
I did used to think they would give a decent version but think I was looking at Prince of Persia Sands trilogy on there and while researching, I found it doesn't support the 360 controller.

ancapailldorcha · 26-09-2020 4:46pm

CastorTroy wrote: »

Think my GoG library only consists of a couple game collections I purchased on sale. everything else was free.
I won't be buying MGS but was just giving possible reasons for the version they're giving.
I did used to think they would give a decent version but think I was looking at Prince of Persia Sands trilogy on there and while researching, I found it doesn't support the 360 controller.

If they're selling it, they're responsible for it. I don't know much about how it would be done but surely some company could have bought the rights to it and patched before GOG started flogging a dodgy version. Found a video about it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BPkAMkva0g

gizmo · 26-09-2020 6:10pm

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

If they're selling it, they're responsible for it. I don't know much about how it would be done but surely some company could have bought the rights to it and patched before GOG started flogging a dodgy version.

The first part of your reply pretty much addresses why no one would bundle fan patches in a release. It's not in any company's best interests to release a product with someone else's reverse engineered work, nevermind the additional QA overhead such a release would incur.

That being said, the fan patch claims appear to be a little off base here. The GOG release appears to have addressed nearly all of the things they could reasonably do, most of which are outlined in the PCGamingWiki article here. The only thing not included, and rightfully so, is the widescreen patch which involves stretching the image and would be a wholly unsuitable solution for a retail product.

As CastorTroy pointed out, GOG's role in this is straight-forward - take the original release, make sure it works on modern platforms and sell it. It's not their place, nor would it even be in their capability, to make any meaningful source or content changes. I would say it would have been far better to have included some high res images of the box in the bundle though. When faced with the codec request in-game that would have been the first place I'd have looked, not a screenshot on the game's store page on the GOG site.

It was the PC version I actually played back in the day, picked it up from EB back in Liffey Valley and I enjoyed the absolute hell out of it. One of the comments on GOG that did stand out was regarding the effect they used for the stealth enemies and Grey Fox. Given the performance hit it still seems to incur, I can only assume it was terribly written. Back in my original playthrough, it made the ambush elevator scene nearly unplayable on my poor 4MB nVidia Riva 128 card, I can still remember the rage :pac:

Azza · 27-09-2020 11:00pm

I looked into the PC port of Metal Gear Solid a while back.
It wasn't handled by Konami but outsourced to a company called Digital Dialect.
The port features most of the content from Metal Gear Solid Integral (or Metal Gear: Special Missions on as it was known in PAL regions)

There is quite a few differences between it and the PSX version.

Supports of resolutions of up to 1024x768 as opposed to 320x240 of the PSX version.
The developers of the PC port where able to come up with a fix to the texture warping issue that affects the PSX version (and PSX games in general), hence the PC version looks alot more stable in motion.
People are divided whether the higher resolution makes the game look worse or better though.
The soliton rader is a lot clear looking on PC.
2D text like that appearing in the credits is of a lower quality on PC.
The developers had intended to introduce higher quality textures into the port but this was blocked by Kojima himself, who felt it would make the game look worse. the port developers came to agree with his assessment.
PC version has faster load times.
No rumble on PC version.
The 300 VR missions and photoshoto from Intergral are available without having to unlock them.
FPS mode can be toggled off and on at any time as opposed to it being an entirely separate game mode as it was on PSX.
Game can be saved at any time with having to communicate with Mei Ling.
Like the PSX version its capped at 30FPS (the PAL PSX version of course ran at 25FPS)
The PC version lacks several effects of the PSX version like motion blur, likely graphics cards at the time where not capable of running them.
The PC version has a more normalized colour scheme than PSX, and has lost the the purplish tint of the PSX game.
The developers never got access to the internal mixer or the games soundtrack and had to rip the soundtrack from fansites. Hence the music and audio is of lower quality and speech is off pitch. The alert theme plays for 30 seconds instead of 60, the duel music for boss battles is missing replaced by the alert theme, and the Evasion theme is also missing. Not the fault of the port developers, all Konami's fault.
The audio was not redone for the PC version so when characters talk about controls they will talk about PSX controls and buttons, the subtitled text was updated to reflect PC commands though.
The Pyscho Mantis boss battle removed the controller vibrating and memory card reading sequence. If played on a control pad, the player will have to switch to keyboard and mouse instead of controller to defeat him. If already using a keyboard and mouse you don't need to switch.
The Hideo message during the Psycho Mantis boss battle is gone.
The codec with audio commentary added in Integral is missing.
Meryls sneaking suit from MGS Integeral is also not in PC port.
The 3 bonus trailers from MGS Integeral are also not in the PC port.

The GOG version allows much higher resolutions than the original version but there is no widescreen support.
The GOG version fixes an issue with FMV that features real life footage not playing. This was to do with the video format becoming antiquated after Windows 98 which the original port was designed for.
Still has the known issue of a black bar appearing at the bottom of the screen.

The biggest issue with the PC port was the missing graphics features like depth of field and motion blur and the poor state of the audio, but I don't think the originally port developers where at fault for those issues.
At least now that there is a version that's easy to run though, might find some modders will be able to fix the audio in time.

Azza · 28-09-2020 1:52pm

From what I know about the MGS2 port.

It was based on the Substance version of MGS2 so has all the additional content of Substance but lacks the PS2 exclusive skateboarding mini game content.

Likely based off the Xbox port but does not suffer from the slow down issues that affect the Xbox port or the Xbox ports muddy textures.

The main criticisms of the port where some graphical features where not rendered as well as the PS2 version. Again likely a limitation of PC hardware at the time. There might have been a few graphical bugs as well but I believe on the whole they where pretty minor.

Lacks the pressure sensitive controls the Playstation version had. On the PS2 version you could hold up enemies by lightly holding down a button and by releasing the button you didn't have to fire. This is not possible on PC controls but you can work around it by accessing the items options to end the hold up command. Again this likely simply due to PC controllers of the era lacking pressure sensitive buttons.

No rumble support again. Can be fixed by a mod.

The default controls where considered awful. You had to aim with the start button and use Y to fire!

Like the original PS2 and Xbox release it doesn't support widescreen, something modders were not able to correct either (hacked widescreen is stretched). Only the Xbox 360 and PS3 version had widescreen support added.

Game ran at 480i on PS2 at 60FPS (50FPS on PAL). PC version ran up to 1600x1200 and at 60FPS.

The Fortune boss fight was known to exhibit slow down on the NTSC (American/Japanese) PS2 version. This was not an issue on the PAL PS2 version. In fact to compensate for the slow down the developers changed her attack pattern to fire slower in the NTSC version. In the PAL PS2 version the fight lasts a lot longer (elevator speed was tied to frame rate) and she fires about 20 more shots at the player. Its highly unlikely the PC version suffers from slow down.

Likewise, the Solidus choke scene lasted for 65 seconds on PAL versions, 60 seconds on the American version of the game and 55 seconds on the Japanese version. The HD ports reduced the whole sequence to just 15 seconds. I believe its likely 60 seconds in the PC port.

gizmo · 28-09-2020 2:53pm

Azza wrote: »

The Pyscho Mantis boss battle removed the controller vibrating and memory card reading sequence. If played on a control pad, the player will have to switch to keyboard and mouse instead of controller to defeat him. If already using a keyboard and mouse you don't need to switch.

Can confirm this is very much not fun.

Azza · 28-09-2020 4:48pm

gizmo wrote: »

Can confirm this is very much not fun.

I can imagine.

Again I doubt much could be done about this at the time. I don't think USB was standard back then having all come around in 1996. Probably something like game port was the standard at the time and I'd image most PC's only had one of them. I doubt it would work like modern PC's where you can plug the controller out and back in and would be re-detected and would work again, you would probably have to restart the game. Another issue might have been even if you had a second game port, there might have been no way for windows or the game to differentiate between the ports.

Alot of console/arcade ports had issues like these back in the 1990's.

The Resident Evil/Dino Crisis games, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII had a number of issues that relate to PC standards or lack there of during the mid to late 90's.

They could still have a few advantages as well.

gizmo · 28-09-2020 5:21pm

Azza wrote: »

I can imagine.

Again I doubt much could be done about this at the time. I don't think USB was standard back then having all come around in 1996. Probably something like game port was the standard at the time and I'd image most PC's only had one of them. I doubt it would work like modern PC's where you can plug the controller out and back in and would be re-detected and would work again, you would probably have to restart the game. Another issue might have been even if you had a second game port, there might have been no way for windows or the game to differentiate between the ports.

All pretty much correct, aye. This was the early days of Plug & Play after all

If I remember correctly, the only way to have multiple game ports on a PC back then was to have an external card, be it a dedicated I/O card or a soundcard, in addition to the one on your motherboard. In my case, I was playing with a first generation MS Sidewinder controller. Their solution at the time was to have an additional gameport at the top of the device which allowed you to plug another controller into it, allowing for daisy chaining.

I did love that controller at the time but I wouldn't wish that period of hardware (in)compatibility on anyone now.

Azza · 28-09-2020 6:58pm

gizmo wrote: »

All pretty much correct, aye. This was the early days of Plug & Play after all

If I remember correctly, the only way to have multiple game ports on a PC back then was to have an external card, be it a dedicated I/O card or a soundcard, in addition to the one on your motherboard. In my case, I was playing with a first generation MS Sidewinder controller. Their solution at the time was to have an additional gameport at the top of the device which allowed you to plug another controller into it, allowing for daisy chaining.

I did love that controller at the time but I wouldn't wish that period of hardware (in)compatibility on anyone now.

The sidewinder was a legendary controller. MS had sidewinder flight sticks as well. Ah good times.

I'm quite tempted as a hobby to go back and build MS-DOS and Windows 98SE machines. Have to relearn all the tech from the time. Not that I mind, just where I'm living at the moment I don't have the space for them.

Retr0gamer · 29-09-2020 12:57pm

I had a first gen Sidewinder as well. It's an underappreciated joypad and I'd rank it up there with the saturn controller as one of the best controllers ever made. The d-pad was just sublime and 6 face buttons meant loads of functionality. Loved that you could daisy chain them as well which meant me and my friends could play 4 player games like Simpsons and Turtles on mame. Would love to hunt down the USB version that came out later.

Retr0gamer · 29-09-2020 1:00pm

Playing a lot of Deus Ex at the moment. Really gotten into it and think I'll end up finishing it now. It's the most PC of PC games. Absolutely wonderful level design as well. Thought it might let up in the later stages. I saw that a lot with PC FPS games were you would have a lot of ideas and inventiveness in the first few stages and then devolve into mindless shooting of bullet sponge enemies a few levels in (looking at you SIN). But so far the game has been consistently brilliant. I'm at the submarine area and checked gamefaqs to see how long I have left and I'm only about half way though!!!

I forgot how long onld PC games could be.

29-09-2020 1:09pm

You talking about the original deus ex?

Azza · 29-09-2020 1:48pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Playing a lot of Deus Ex at the moment. Really gotten into it and think I'll end up finishing it now. It's the most PC of PC games. Absolutely wonderful level design as well. Thought it might let up in the later stages. I saw that a lot with PC FPS games were you would have a lot of ideas and inventiveness in the first few stages and then devolve into mindless shooting of bullet sponge enemies a few levels in (looking at you SIN). But so far the game has been consistently brilliant. I'm at the submarine area and checked gamefaqs to see how long I have left and I'm only about half way though!!!

I forgot how long onld PC games could be.

Ah Deus Ex.
For its time the graphics where poor and performance wasn't great, its combat and stealth mechanics where serviceable if unexceptionable, the voice acting ranged from passable to outright racist (JC Denton in the fresh!), plot was an amalgamation of a half dozen storylines from the X-Files. On paper only the electronic jazz soundtrack really stands out. The game has on paper no right to be anything more than a distinctly average game.

But it ended up being godlike. The game gave you so many ways of completing an objective and like no other game at the time the storyline would bend to your specific actions. Was a revelation.

As Warren Spector was later quoted about game design " I’d rather do something that’s an inch wide and a mile deep than something that’s a mile wide and an inch deep" So very very apt!

If you think the game was is long Retro they actually scaled it back quite a lot, an almost fully complete White House and Presidential bunker was removed from the game and the original storylines had a trip to Texas and the moon as well as a Rogue A.I called Ada in it.

The full design documents for Deus Ex are online a few years now. When you complete the game you should give it a read.

Retr0gamer · 29-09-2020 1:52pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You talking about the original deus ex?

Yes. Now you have to reinstall it.

Retr0gamer · 29-09-2020 1:58pm

As for the length I guess I'm just so used to the 8 hour action game. However I don't feel deus ex is over staying it's welcome.

There is a lot of jank but the amount of choice and options open to the player elevate it to god tier status.

PC Gaming, General & Off Topic Chat

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