[TerranUp16]

Hmk, so, despite my rather staunch support of the PC as a gaming platform and despite that ever since switching from being mostly a console gamer (minus RTS games) to a PC gamer I have been much happier... There is some stupid, basic shit about PC games that often goes overlooked in game development.

For example, transferring save files between computers/reformats. Games are typically meant to be eternal, in a respect. However, it is pretty much a given that at some point you are going to get a new computer or are going to upgrade to a new OS or are going to reformat your hard drive or etc... However, transferring your save files is often an annoying, tedious, and ultimately iffy process. In fact, Games for Windows Live games purposely make this process almost impossible to, "protect the integrity of the Achievements system". For every other game, just locating the save files can often be a complete pain in the ass of sifting through multiple potential hidey holes on your hard drive. Imo, this is very rectifiable. Besides the obvious Steam Cloud route (fyi, Impulse is also, apparently, preparing something similar), why the hell can we not just have an option in the Options menu to Import/Export a profile? This would make it insanely easy to deal with save game files because you don't have to look for where the file is stored and can simply have the game export it to your desktop or thumb drive or XHD or whatever. And when you get your new rig up and running, you can simply Import the file. DUR.

Also, what happens when you alt+tab from a game (nevermind that every game should be tested strenuously to ensure that alt+tabbing works seamlessly because most games alt+tab terribly and yet the ability to do that is a huge convenience that PC games *should* offer)? For many RTS games, the answer is that they will pause until you maximize the game again and/or the game will not actually minimize but instead window (ala CoH) thereby alerting you that it has not paused. But then there is always the game that doesn't pause, like SoaSE, and you get raped because of it. I'm not suggesting that we allow pausing in MP, but in SP, players should have the option to dictate whether a game pauses or not (for example, I could see why you might want to let SoaSE just run for a bit while you're alt+tabbed). Furthermore, with the increasing amount of games that window for alt+tabs, that too should be an option- should the game window or minimize when alt+tabbed?

Another issue with many PC games is multiple monitor recognition. I will sometimes have to disable my second monitor to play games because the game will allow my mouse cursor to roam onto my second screen- it will not bound it to my primary screen. This is particularly problematic in RTS games where the cursor often controls camera movement and thus an entire quarter of your camera movement can be cut-off by this happening. All that's needed to fix this is some simple testing- the fact that MOST games don't have this problem is simple proof enough of that.

Also, do I even need to talk about aspect ratio support? Sakura, even from its earliest stages, has always been able to run in whatever aspect ratio and resolution the user has wanted it to by simply editing the config file (for Wartide and etc, you won't have to open a config file to do that- it will be in the options). And, for most games and most engines, this is true. The issue is that developers simply do not provide the player with the tools or moddable files to do this (if you're lucky, you'll be able to dig through a config.ini file to make the change). Once again, stupid shit...

So, what I want to know, and why this is in the Developers' Corner, are what stupid issues you've had with PC games and what you would like to see done about them. As a PC developer and PC gamer myself, I hate it when little shit like this goes ignored because it picks away at the quality of a game and drums up the annoyance meter. So I want to ensure that for all my projects that we nip as many of these kinds of problems in the butt as we possibly can, and I'm sure many others here feel the exact same way. So post away and know that your voice will be heard.

[cyb.tachyon]

Amen brotha!

[JewBaka]

there needs to be a back ground check and a 3 day waiting period before people can get online to play a game, especially with voice communication

[ninjafish]

One thing that really annoyed me a while back was related to the TF2 in game video recording feature. Its probably more of a Source engine thing, but it affected me via TF2.

I had recorded a lot of cool in game demos from LANs, random online play, and times I felt like using the recording during the first 6 months the game was out. Then one day, they released a patch that somehow changed the way the in game videos were recorded and played back. At first I didn't care, then I noticed I could no longer play back any of my in game demos recorded before that patch. I was and still am pretty annoyed by this sudden loss of support for videos that were being recorded and played back just a day before that patch for the same exact game.

Now if I couldn't play my videos in team fortress 3, then I would understand. But its the same game, same engine, but just a few tweaks turned my videos to useless files. Theres probably some complicated work around or 3rd party program I could download to watch them again but thats pretty annoying and far from convenient.

Long story short, if you have a feature that can save/record data in a game, don't release a patch for that same game that breaks all previously saved/recorded files unless it causes a crash or some serious exploit. This could be considered backwards compatibility, but since its the same game, same engine, its just compatibility.

[sgage]

Damn... you should submit that to the Future as an opinion piece. That's the type of gaming article they need... last week's game "opinion" was so crappy: "I hate paying for DLC. Wah! Wah! Wah!" That's what you get for being on a console dude.

[TerranUp16]

sgage said:

Damn... you should submit that to the Future as an opinion piece. That's the type of gaming article they need... last week's game "opinion" was so crappy: "I hate paying for DLC. Wah! Wah! Wah!" That's what you get for being on a console dude.

Heh, yeah, DLC sucks but then they put up with it on the consoles... It's kinda making its way onto PC but there does seem to be a moderate buffer against it and I think that's only going to grow stronger. Imo though, on the PC, I think as digital distribution becomes more and more dominant, we are going to have a revolution in terms of game distribution- not how in terms of how the user acquires the game be it retail or digital, but rather for how much the user acquires the game for and exactly what that means.

Whereas console games get away with selling games for $60 and then lopping $10 DLC on top of that, I think that on PC, digital distribution is going to have developers starting their prices for the initial game lower and then using DLC to tap farther into the market. I also feel that there is a staunch cadre of developers such as Valve who are realizing that $50 may actually not be a great price target- when Valve cut the price of L4D in half they not only sold significantly more than they did with their $50 launch but they actually MADE MORE too. On the whole, I think you're just going to see much smarter approaches to distributing content arriving on the PC and I think that while there is going to be a short-term push for paid PC DLC that it is going to just get crushed by all of that.

As for an opinion piece in The Future, the problem I have with that is that these issues, while annoying, are small. A discussion like this really needs to take place within a circle of people who really know PC gaming and know how relatively minor these problems are in the grand scheme of things. Placing this post in an open forum where people are unfamiliar with PC gaming will likely mean that the context of the conversation will be misunderstood and that these criticisms would only be received negatively by those who do not partake in PC gaming. In short, I'd have to write about a rather sizable foreword on the high points of PC gaming and why one would prefer PC gaming or partake in it before bringing up such criticisms of it.

[Thunderg0d]

Paying for DLC in the form of add-ons for PC games will get protested by its community. Xbox 360 was able to get away with it by charging for the online service and then a la carte for everything to download (pretty much). That system had the precedent from the beginning, unlike the PC realm. The users are already used to not paying, and will see it as an inconvenience. Think of guitar hero or rock band for xbox...they could probably give the game itself away for free and then make it all back in the DLC that people are investing in...similar to how the subscription MMORPGs work on PC. However, that could bring up that games could get the eventuality of being free, but to access the majority of the content of the game, you still have to pay (treat you like a demo level user in a full live game without calling it one more/less) and probably monthly.

A company could make it work, they just would have to find the fine line of what a majority of people would accept. Just pictured if steam charged monthly to just use their service now that they have such a monster user base? Even $2/month would let them rape face in the grand scheme of revenues. Just some thoughts to consider that could get annoying if it happened.

[BUDMAN]

how about release dates? stop giving them, we know you are going to follow through and release it then.i got tired a long time ago of getting excited for a game only to be crushed cuz it will come out later, dont give a date til the game is done or least give a general time frame like a 6 month period or something. and along the lines of this, stop relying on patches, fucking lame how many times has a game come out and there is a lready a patch ready the day of release. i mean wtf, i know they can cover every single kind of configuration but still. although steam makes this process pretty seamless which is nice and almost unoticeable but other games fuck you for having to search out a patch

[Enduro]

The correct disk must be inserted into drive to play. Always hated that, hate requiring a CD/DVD to play a game, I know there are cracks but patches come out, and then you have to go get another crack and then another just gets tiring. Most developers know we are just going to get a crack anyway, why not just provide an exe that doesnt require a CD/DVD to play. This is the whole reason I buy all my games off steam now, not to mention the amazing sales steam offers.

DRM, nuff said.

Game & Movie Releases, why do they do it? Because they want the movie and the game to come out together? How can you develop a game based on a movie that is in the process of being made itself? It doesn't work, take iron man for example probably the biggest piece of shit I've ever played, thank god for bittorrent, cause if I bought that game I would have shot myself. Make a good movie, then develop a good game.

Hackers, doubt if you ever seen a hacker in a console game, PC multiplayer is a different story.

[Zuccolo]

sgage said:

Damn... you should submit that to the Future as an opinion piece. That's the type of gaming article they need... last week's game "opinion" was so crappy: "I hate paying for DLC. Wah! Wah! Wah!" That's what you get for being on a console dude.

Another opinion piece that should be sent to the Future is, "The Future is Probably the Worst Piece of Publication in the World."

[Destroyer1990]

ninjafish said:

One thing that really annoyed me a while back was related to the TF2 in game video recording feature. Its probably more of a Source engine thing, but it affected me via TF2.

I had recorded a lot of cool in game demos from LANs, random online play, and times I felt like using the recording during the first 6 months the game was out. Then one day, they released a patch that somehow changed the way the in game videos were recorded and played back. At first I didn't care, then I noticed I could no longer play back any of my in game demos recorded before that patch. I was and still am pretty annoyed by this sudden loss of support for videos that were being recorded and played back just a day before that patch for the same exact game.

Now if I couldn't play my videos in team fortress 3, then I would understand. But its the same game, same engine, but just a few tweaks turned my videos to useless files. Theres probably some complicated work around or 3rd party program I could download to watch them again but thats pretty annoying and far from convenient.

Long story short, if you have a feature that can save/record data in a game, don't release a patch for that same game that breaks all previously saved/recorded files unless it causes a crash or some serious exploit. This could be considered backwards compatibility, but since its the same game, same engine, its just compatibility.

That's probably TF2's greatest fault. Just about every single patch that's released, screws something up. Don't know if it's fixed now, but yesterday every single taunt was broken. I hear Natascha is broken again, and the Source Mod found on most servers has gotten several issues itself. There are a few other glitches that are around as well, but that's not the point.

I think Valve just tries to rush stuff out the door, and obviously what's rushing for them, is a long time for us. Yes, it's been 6 months since the last TF2 class update, but their company is too small to break it up into "You guys work on only TF2, and YOU guys work only on L4D, and you guys (etc, etc.)..." So all the while it's painful for us, as gamers, to make our complaints known and not have any word from the company about how/if they're going to fix it. They try, and they get the game fixed in some senses, but the timing for when they want it released (or maybe something unpredictable went wrong when releasing the patch) is too soon and they don't test everything.

Hopefully Valve will be able to released patches that doesn't screw other stuff up by the time the final class is updated... if we're lucky...

[Joga]

Consolitis.

Maybe 'cause I just bought Lost Planet ($5 on Steam over the weekend), but it suffers severely from consolitis. A couple of examples:

-The controls in Lost Planet are shown using the Xbox 360 controller. When I get in the mech suit thing, it tells me to "Press the Y-button to dash." Where the fuck is my Y-button? Turns out it's the "change weapon" key, which is middle click by default.

-Menus/presentation: It shouldn't take eleven steps to exit a game (*cough*assassin'screed*cough*). Menus in general should be designed for PC use (I'm looking at you, Oblivion). Oblivion has an inventory screen clearly designed for 640x480 SD televisions - with only 6 items seen at a time. A mod called BTmod corrects this, but still.
Bad:
Good:
Also, in-game menus should always support mouse wheel scrolling. Always.

-Mouse acceleration/lag: This is the most annoying one. Basically, the (console-centric) game engine treats mouse movement like a control stick, i.e.:
moving mouse slowly = slightly tilting the control stick
moving mouse quickly = tilting control stick all the way

Even worse is when they tie your mouse movement to the framerate, so if you're getting 30 fps it will only update your mouse 30 times a seconds and it feels laggy as hell. (Lost Planet does this)

Dead Space, Lost Planet, GTA4, Assassin's Creed, Mirror's Edge, Bioshock (UE3 games in general seem to suffer from this) all suffer from bad mouse controls in varying degrees.

See any Source-engine game for a good example of what mouse movement should feel like.

[TerranUp16]

Enduro said:

Hackers, doubt if you ever seen a hacker in a console game, PC multiplayer is a different story.

They are actually present on consoles but generally in different forms. I definitely hear and see far more exploits... exploited... in console MP games in general while in PC games you only have to deal with the occasional hacker and occasional dumbass. The problem w/dealing with hacking is that it's not easy and it's not that developers aren't trying- it's an open platform and because of that users have access to far more of the game than console gamers do. On one hand, this is what allows for mods, but on the other hand it also allows for hacking. There are entire companies and services devoted to combating hackers ala PunkBuster so it's something that is being addressed by developers.

Here's another huge issue I often have- mapping controls.

First, for many console ports, I actually have to unplug my joystick because it will detect it as a gamepad and will enable it AND my keyboard and my view will commence spinning because I can never get that thing zeroed properly. Should be able to designate peripherals to disable and/or select peripherals to enable so that ONLY THOSE PERIPHERALS YOU HAVE SELECTED ARE ENABLED.

Of course, another huge problem can often be mapping to the joystick. There are certain games... GAMES WITH AIRCRAFT... where I cannot map certain, vital controls (like, oh, I dunno... pitch, yaw, etc...!!!) to my joystick. In other games (notably a certain racing game called GRID), detecting input for the joystick will just flat-out fail. That is, it will be supported and the joystick is detected but it can't decipher the proper axes? For example, when I want to turn right, I move my joystick left... but when I go to map that in various games like GRID, it will just flat-out eff-up and choose a different axis. For most games this is ok because it will detect at least one of the two directions properly and automatically properly map the other. This is problematic in GRID because it doesn't auto-map the negative direction... And to clarify, I use a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro which has been around since... the turn of the century? And it's still being sold- brand new- today. It's one of the most commonly-used joysticks around.

Along the same lines, there is about a 50/50 chance that I will be able to properly map mouse buttons beyond the LMB and RMB. This problem does not only concern the thumb buttons on my G9 (though that is a common and extraordinarily annoying problem- even mainstream mice are starting to insert thumb buttons and etc for us in browsing the internet to go Back and etc though my favorite use for my G9 thumb buttons when not in-game is for rapid c+p) but even the Middle Mouse Button and Scroll Wheel! Being able to map to these keys and/or remap them should be absolutely standard.

[Deron]

There is hacking...

And there is glitching...

And MOST definitely there is the lag switch. Were people will lag you out of a game, or make the game so laggy it is unplayable.

The main difference is for PC, if you hack you are only booted from a single server, and there are many other servers to choose from. With console (at least the 360) the actually ban you console, so you would have to get another one to go online again.

[ninjafish]

Deron said:

There is hacking...

And there is glitching...

And MOST definitely there is the lag switch. Were people will lag you out of a game, or make the game so laggy it is unplayable.

The main difference is for PC, if you hack you are only booted from a single server, and there are many other servers to choose from. With console (at least the 360) the actually ban you console, so you would have to get another one to go online again.

VAC secured servers in steam i think will also ban you from all other servers if your caught cheating. I think a similar system is implemented in many other FPS that will ban your CD key from authenticating with their master server.

Also, back when I played halo 2 on live there were plenty of cheaters, once you got to a certain point in ranked matches, 1/4 matches had a obvious cheater in it (the kind that would shoot a sniper rifle like a machine gun of head shots the instant you spawned).

[Deron]

There is hacking...

And there is glitching...

And MOST definitely there is the lag switch. Were people will lag you out of a game, or make the game so laggy it is unplayable.

The main difference is for PC, if you hack you are only booted from a single server, and there are many other servers to choose from. With console (at least the 360) the actually ban you console, so you would have to get another one to go online again.

[ninjafish]

Deron said:

There is hacking...

And there is glitching...

And MOST definitely there is the lag switch. Were people will lag you out of a game, or make the game so laggy it is unplayable.

The main difference is for PC, if you hack you are only booted from a single server, and there are many other servers to choose from. With console (at least the 360) the actually ban you console, so you would have to get another one to go online again.

VAC secured servers in steam i think will also ban you from all other servers if your caught cheating. I think a similar system is implemented in many other FPS that will ban your CD key from authenticating with their master server.

Also, back when I played halo 2 on live there were plenty of cheaters, once you got to a certain point in ranked matches, 1/4 matches had a obvious cheater in it (the kind that would shoot a sniper rifle like a machine gun of head shots the instant you spawned).