Any QC for XBox software?(Or, a Morrowind rant)

[BenSkywalker]

I've been spending most of my free time with Morrowind for the last couple of weeks(Basement is still down ) and have had the chance to witness what is easily the poorest coded console software I have ever seen. Disgustingly bad. Seriously has lowered my views on the entire industry(it's bad even using the extremely low PC standards). I logged about eight hours playing last night and had the luxury of over thirty crashes, one corrupt save game file, and one forced reload over a hosed game due to the extrodinarily linear queat requirements not being spelled out explicitly(become the Nevervaine without being a Redoran House member and fulfilling some other, unknown apparently after searching for an hour, criteria) putting me back about ten hours worth of gameplay I'm simply dumbfounded by how the hell anyone could release such an utter piece of shit on to the market.

This game is flawed in pretty much every possible aspect. Besides the obvious lousy combat system and extensive amount of forced walking which are really just piss poor gameplay choices, they created a game with inter dependant quests without letting you know how they tie together nor flushing them out in the design process to make sure there were not serious flaws destroying save files with 40-50 hours worth of work on them. The only way to work around this is to make sure you keep a save file from every five to ten hours of gaming so you can revert back without losing too much. But then you run into another example of the sub primate level coding, Morrowind fvcks itself all up by mis utilizing the XB's cache and creates can not read disk errors if you have too many save files. Their "solution" to these problems? Go out and buy an XBox memory external memory unit. Fire up Morrowind and delte all but your most recent save game. Then take Morrowind out, go in to the XB'x memory management screen and move the singular save file to your external memory card and then erase all Morrowind save files from the XBox. After that, you only need to play three XBox games and you should be fine for a few hours. That is assuming that you don't trap yourself in a situation where the entire game is hosed and you can't beat it.

If that was all the problems Morrowind had, perhaps it would be simply equal to ET for the Atari 2600 for lousy execution, but there is more! Sometimes, crucial NPCs to the game will drop through the floor and vanish from the world. You can log thirty to fourty hours building up your character to realize that you can not progress anymore(if by some stroke of luck you didn't screw anything else along the way) because a quest giving NPC simply ceased to exist in your game world.

Bethesda's solution to that one?

Start over, maybe it won't happen next time

These are not isolated issues, I have checked and they appear to be quite rampant in the game. The biggest suggestion for dealing with the horrendous design issues is to use a walkthrough and follow it to the letter, that way only the vanishing NPCs will kill your game, and then it isn't too frequent

For the bugs you use their suggestions and you can get a few hours at a time of crash free gaming, if your quest gets screwed up why weren't you using a walkthrough like you always should on an 'open ended RPG'

It isn't always isolated to the incredibly stupid cache management issues, I can hard lock the XBox in a high pitched annoying squeal at will by simply using a high power levitate spell and then using dispel to get rid of it(which is handy when you are trying to rest, but not an option).

My big question is where the fvck was MS's or Bethesda's QC for this game? This is piss poor by PC standards and by FAR the poorest example of console coding I have ever seen. If this is indicative of the level of QC that we can expect from future XB titles I'll throw the console out now. Bethesda is already firmly on my boycott forever list, I would be hard pressed to think how they could have executed more poorly then they did releasing this pre alpha shit on the market.

The saddest part is that Morrowind would have been a great game if not for the problems. As of right now, with about sixty hours in to the game, I'm looking at giving it a solid 0 out of 5- non functional.

 

[Trawler]

If the game is so terrible, why have you spent 60 hours playing it?

 

[Rodéric]

When you have paid a game that much money, you don't plan on forgetting about it.

I've the PC version, and it's far from being good, either on gameplay and technique, still i play it from time to time, just to be sure it's bad ;p

Behtesda isn't really known to make high quality games, but rather big sized games ^^

Buggy console games are the beginning of the end

 

[BenSkywalker]

If the game is so terrible, why have you spent 60 hours playing it?

I started the game, I will finish it. I review games, you can not review a game until you have finished it. This game is going to get a review, which means if it takes me two hundred hours it will be done(and my venom will have increased enormously of course ).

It actually starts off relatively problem free. I didn't see my first crash at all until about fifteen to twenty hours in, and then they snowball(this is the norm judging by all the information gathering I can find including Bethesda). In that sixty hours I only have about thirty in to my game at the moment(been forced to revert back to old save files multiple times due to the screwed inter looping quest bugs, one of them cost me a good fifteen hours of gameplay- do not go to Tel Fyr with a dwemer artifact until you are on a Blade quest to do so or your game is shot, which unforunately you can do in the first couple of hours and not realize you trashed your game for another ten to thirty hours depending on how many guild quests you do).

Actually as of this point, I would stop playing if I could get my money back. But I can't, so I will finish it and review it where it will get what it deserves.

The game would be great if not for the poorest display of console game coding I have ever seen(when it works for a couple hours straight it is a hell of a game).

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Ben:

These are the fruits of Microsoft's "We'll bring over the wealth of PC game developers to make games for the xbox!" campaign. Atleast on the PS2 and gamecube you are coding for one platform and one platform only, not trying to code mostly for xbox or mostly for PC, but with the intent to have it run on both.

Quite honestly, morrowind from a technical perspective is a terrible game. The rendering engine (netimmersion) in and of itself isn't that great, but there are other games out there that have atleast made decent use of it. Morrowind on the otherhand performs terribly on both the PC and the xbox. My guess is it most is due to back-to-front rendering, but the high poly counts probably don't help either. (which are wasted due to the poor texture quality on the models). As you mentioned earlier, objects, enemies, and NPCs will drop through the floor, and it's not really a terribly rare occurance. Not only that, but there are times when you yourself will just as easily slip between a rock and a wall and find yourself looking at a grey background with the outside of the current level zone hovering infront of you. On the PC side, the game has improved somewhat with the first and second patch. Performance hasn't really increased, but atleast some of the random crashes and memory leaks have been fixed. No such luck on the xbox though. the Morrowind forums are filled with people complaining about this game, and quite honestly rightly so.

Obviously morrowind has some pretty nice aspects to it, otherwise people wouldn't be interested in buying it. The world art is *really* nice in some places. A lot of the outdoor scenes are very pretty, and I still load up the game every once and a while to look at the sky and run through some of the lusher and greener parts of the world. Some of the sideplots, and even parts of the main quest are really well done. (though the hortator/tribe leader quests got almost as tedious and boring as doing my income taxes) .

It really sounds like bugs and coding issues have always been bethesda's main weakness, and Morrowind illustrates that exceptionally well. Bethesda needs to hire some new programmers, and put someone in charge that can actually design a high quality game engine. They've got most of the other pieces in place, but people aren't going to buy their games no matter how good they look if they keep having so many engine issues. It just isn't fun.

Nite_Hawk

 

[V3]

A bit late for reviewing Morrowind isn't ?

 

[ERP]

I wanted to make a comment here.
One of the things that happens in submission is that not all games are treated equally, if the console manufacturer wants the title on his platform he will bend the rules to get it passed.
Morrowind is a pretty extreme case, bug wise. As a console developer I can't even imagine submitting a title in that state for approval.
Back in the SNES/Megadrive days I worked on a title that went through Nintendos approval process in under 24 hrs (both US and Japan) and Segas over a weekend. Why? Because it was a highly anticipated title, and in order to hit thanksgiving on the shelves it had to pass.
I know that Square used to get all sorts of leeway with Nintendo submissions.

In a lot of ways it's a pity that a product as buggy as Morrowind can get through MS aproval, but on the other side of the coin I'm not sure that you'd ever have gotten to play an excellent title on Xbox if it really had to go through the approval process, the publisher would most likely have cut it's losses before the product was clean.

Just some thoughts

 

[Tagrineth]

As a console developer I can't even imagine submitting a title in that state for approval.
Back in the SNES/Megadrive days I worked on a title that went through Nintendos approval process in under 24 hrs (both US and Japan) and Segas over a weekend. Why? Because it was a highly anticipated title, and in order to hit thanksgiving on the shelves it had to pass.

What game?

 

[Ozymandis]

Ben, I didn't care for Morrowind either. I know a lot of Xbox lovers enjoyed that game, but for me, ugh. Bored me to tears.

 

[Mr. Angry Pants]

These are the fruits of Microsoft's "We'll bring over the wealth of PC game developers to make games for the xbox!" campaign. Atleast on the PS2 and gamecube you are coding for one platform and one platform only, not trying to code mostly for xbox or mostly for PC, but with the intent to have it run on both.

Yes, because as we all know there has never been a PC game released on the PS2.

No sir. Just ignore Oni, Quake 3, Half-Life, Everquest, Medal of Honor, Tribes...

Sure, some of these games are being over-hauled for their console release, but then Morrowind also went through months of optimization so that it would run half decently on the Xbox.

Other than that, I agree with you 100%.

I'd like to point out that Morrowind was stuck in Microsoft QC longer than any other Xbox game before or since. I think it went through rejection after rejection by Microsoft for the better part of a month. The reason it eventually got through was likely a combination of pressure from the publisher, the Xbox's lack of any sort of RPG in the US, and the anticipation of thousands of fans.

Morrowind for me personaly was a huge let down. 5 years of user-feedback after Daggerfall was apparently lost on Bethesda. The only thing they got right this time was the game world. Besides that, Morrowind is still plagued by the Elder Scrolls curse.

-Lifeless NPCs

-Poorly explained quest objectives

-Terrible combat system (even worse than Daggerfall's)

-Sloppy coding

 

[randycat99]

Strong words indeed from Mr. Skywalker.

Sounds like this would have been a perfect opportunity to utilize one of the "advantages" of the built-in HD in the Xbox. Why haven't they released any software patches for the game?

 

[Plasmatics]

"I can hard lock the XBox in a high pitched annoying squeal"

Haha! I hate that sound so much.

Anyway, I enjoyed the game in spite of its numerous faults.

 

[Glonk]

Strong words indeed from Mr. Skywalker.

Sounds like this would have been a perfect opportunity to utilize one of the "advantages" of the built-in HD in the Xbox. Why haven't they released any software patches for the game?

Because the executables aren't stored on the disk.

 

[Reznor007]

Strong words indeed from Mr. Skywalker.

Sounds like this would have been a perfect opportunity to utilize one of the "advantages" of the built-in HD in the Xbox. Why haven't they released any software patches for the game?

Because the executables aren't stored on the disk.

Couldn't they store a patch on the drive and update the exe at run time?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Nite-

These are the fruits of Microsoft's "We'll bring over the wealth of PC game developers to make games for the xbox!" campaign.

Morrowind to date has been the singular title that I have seen to fall in to the range of PC level software(and at the very bottom end at that) as far as bugs are concerned. If this is a fluke on MS's part in terms of allowing the game to be published it is one thing, if this is indicative of future releases then it is a very serious issue. You make some interesting comments on the rendering engine, is it true that they render back to front? Hell a random sort is a major waste of resources on the XB, doing to b>f would be utterly moronic(although that would fit with the way the rest of the title was handled).

V3-

A bit late for reviewing Morrowind isn't ?

For console titles I tend to see less then 33% of hits in the first couple of months the review is posted. I don't frequently worry about a time table for console titles, if anything loading Q4 with reviews, even if they are of older titles, tends to reap the most benefits to readers and the site when it comes to console games.

ERP-

Were you working at Boss back then? I have to say I don't recall any bugs in any of the titles I ever had from Boss studios, under those circumstances I can see a bit of leeway when you are in a Q4 hurry release. This was a mid year slow sales period era game from an unproven company. I would hope that nothing as bad as Morrowind would make it out under any circumstances, but particularly not given the timing of its release.

Ozy-

It took me about fifteen to twenty hours to warm up to the gameplay in Morrowind. Much of the cumbersome nature of the battle system is overcome simply by leveling your character up and gaining the proper attributes in the game so you actually land hits when you are 3' away using a long sword(why they made it like this instead of having you gain strength is beyond me). It still is far from a great or even good interface in terms of battle, but the game certainly improved considerably for me after spending quite a bit of time with it. Shame is, I currently can't play for more then ten minutes without the game crashing out on me. It's going to make it very hard to finish the title under these circumstances. I know why it is doing it now, if I restarted the game I would play through very differently, including not touching anyone's stuff that I don't own to reduce the size of the save files and hence reduce the amount of fragmentation that the game is experiencing leading to the stability issues. Particularly interesting to myself is that every one of my Halo save files is larger then any of my Morrowind files and I have ten fold the amount of Halo files yet still no problems. Clearly Bethesda is of a very low caliber when it comes to coding.

Mr Angry Pants-

like to point out that Morrowind was stuck in Microsoft QC longer than any other Xbox game before or since.

It should still be there judging by the amount of work it needs to be a viable title If that is true I would have hated to see the title prior to MS's involvement, although it really isn't an excuse for MS as the game is still far from in a releasable state.

Randy-

Why haven't they released any software patches for the game?

While Morrowind is certainly in need of one, the combination of having to modify the executable at run time and far more importantly the floodgates it would open make it something I wouldn't want to see. They should do like MS did with the Halo GOTY and the Gamespy crippling, have an end product featuring a few tweaks(well, a shitload of them in Morrowind's case) that are transparent to end users with the exception of certain things being gone(although in Halo that was a negative).

Plasmatics-

Haha! I hate that sound so much.

First time I got it to do that I said out loud(despite being alone in the room) 'what the fvck is this?'. I first I thought it might be a hang as I get the same problem using one of the custom summon spells I made with the system hanging for a bit before it completes the spell. I actually sat and listened to that for about a minute to a minute and a half prior to shutting it down(grates my nerves like hell, at least in the summon hang it is a lower pithed more tollerable volume level then the dispel/levitate squeal).

 

[ERP]

Were you working at Boss back then?

My SNES/Genesis work predates Boss. And the title in question was actually pretty clean, certainly in the realm of shipped console titles, but we did a lot of QA internally. The point isn't so much how clean or buggy the title was, just that it got special treatment.

I have to say I don't recall any bugs in any of the titles I ever had from Boss studios, under those circumstances I can see a bit of leeway when you are in a Q4 hurry release. This was a mid year slow sales period era game from an unproven company. I would hope that nothing as bad as Morrowind would make it out under any circumstances, but particularly not given the timing of its release.

There seem to be two basic development philosophies, "the keep adding features to stay on schedule with no reguard for currentcontent status" approach and the "make sure what you've got is clean before you move on" approach.

I personally subscribe to the latter. You still end up with lots of little piddly bugs that you miss on the way or are due to parculiar content, but it's usually managable.

A lot of developers seem to subscribe to the former strategy (hey you make your milestones and get paid that way), which gets you to Beta faster but in a state that is basically impossible (or at least a lot of time) to get close to bug free.

I think that the final decision for MS probably came down to release this game as is or don't release it, and I'm certain that decision was made above the QA departments heads.
At some point the products publisher or developer (who ever was paying for dev at that point) would simply have cut it's losses, the rumours are that the product was in MS submission for an extended period, and it's possible that the publisher was getting ready to make the decision to cancel the Xbox version.
I guess it comes down to would you rather play a buggy Morrowind or not have it?

Personally I still think it was a bad decision on MS's part and I liked Morrowind, they're trying to establish that Xbox games are not buggy like PC games and then they go and pass a Buggy PC game, it undermines the message they are trying to convey.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Mr. Angry Pants:

Hrm.... I've never really played anything on the PS2, so if those games work well... Good for them.

In the case of Microsoft and Morrowind though, it's like what ERP said. Microsoft brought over a PC title to the xbox, let it pass QA, and it's buggy as hell. Atleast on the PC version you get patches, but so far nothing for the xbox. Even if they do release a patch for the xbox, is this *really* the way you want to see console games going? Releasing shoddy products only to have patches and fixes installed on the HD months later? We already get enough of that on the PC side, and as Ben said if this is going to be the trend for xbox games coming over from the PC as well, it's more a threat to the xbox than either the PS2 or the gamecube is.

I'm not totally disagreeing with you either. I think it's very possible to port PC games over to the xbox and have them work beautifully. I do think however, that the temptation to do a half assed ports because it's fairly easy is going to be hard for some PC developers to resist. Microsoft is pretty hard up for games right now, and letting stuff like morrowind slide through QA is not going to help their bad reputation for crappy software anytime soon.

Ben:

bethesdasoft hasn't actually come out and said it's doing back-to-front, but a number of people on the elderscrolls message boards have made some pretty convincing arguements. Here's a pretty old thread about it on elderscrolls:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/ubbthre...2&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1

I don't know if any newer information has been release about it, but I really wouldn't be suprised if it is the case. I mean, the engine *is* pushing a lot of polys, but my friend's P4 2.4GHz with a ti4600 would drop down to 20fps at times. That's just wrong. (granted, no worse than my athlon 1700+ with a ti200 dropping down to 8fps).

Nite_Hawk

 

[Qroach]

My god, if you have a problem with the game, just bring it back. That's the only way to teach them not to release games like this.

Also, No, this isn't what PC ports to xbox are typically going to be like. Morrowind is NOT your typical PC game. You don't have any idea how difficult and time consuming it is to test a game that is open ended like they designed. If you ask me i'd never make a game like that for a consle because during certification you have to do a HUGE amount of work, and surely still have problems.

Just for submission testing purposes, they have to include a save game at or just before you aquire every since item in the game. They also have to write walk throughs and provide TONS of other information. That game must have been a nightmare to work on! Anyway, as I said, just take it back.

 

[BenSkywalker]

ERP-

The point isn't so much how clean or buggy the title was, just that it got special treatment.

If id handled the XBox port of Doom3 I would have no problem with them getting special treatment in terms of flying through Q&A, they have proven their code carries its own credibility in terms of benig relatively bug free. On the flip side, if Project Ego isn't given particularly harsh treatment I would be very disappointed due to the extremely poor level of QA Lionhead has proven it has.

I guess it comes down to would you rather play a buggy Morrowind or not have it?

It certainly would have been better from my perspective to never have released the game on the XBox. If they hadn't, I would have picked it up for the PC and then I could at least have patches on the horizon to make the game tollerable. At this point it looks like I will have to start the game all over in order to be able to complete it, not stealing anything or touching anything in anyone's house and avoiding all guild quests to reduce my save file.

Nite_Hawk-

but a number of people on the elderscrolls message boards have made some pretty convincing arguements. Here's a pretty old thread about it on elderscrolls:

From what I read in that thread I can't say that I'm convinced they are rendering back to front, a random sort can be assumed but the way in which they are trying to demonstrate the render order doesn't prove the sort order. I'm not saying that they aren't doing things that way, just the evidence they offer doesn't prove it.

Quincy-

My god, if you have a problem with the game, just bring it back.

I can't. The only option I have is to return it for another copy of Morrowind at this point. It's been too long since I purchased it(I've tried this route including getting ahold of Bethesda, I'm simply out $50).

You don't have any idea how difficult and time consuming it is to test a game that is open ended like they designed.

That is no concern of mine in the least. They get paid to do their job. Either they do it, or they don't. If you bought a new car, signed the papers and went to start it to find out there was no engine in the car, would you take- "you have no idea how difficult it is to assemble, install and test the amount of parts they have to to make a car". Then you find out you still have to pay for the car and can't return it, would you be happy? For some reason I doubt it. In essence, that is what Bethesda did.

Just for submission testing purposes, they have to include a save game at or just before you aquire every since item in the game.

They did not do it in this case. You are talking well over a billion possible 'items' in the game when you take all things into consideration. That is clearly too much for there very talent limited team to handle, they should have never attempted it. They could have made the game tollerable by leaving the console in the XBox port, but they were too stupid to do even that.

And there are so many basic simple design elements that they failed utterly on, ignoring the bugs completely. During the design process they should have designed all quests that are important to the central game so that they do not have dependencies that are not explicitly spelled, which they could do at the particular time you need to progress, out or had the game revert to automatic assuption of completion of those quests so you can move forward. They did neither.

The game turning out as poorly as it did was clearly a failure on Bethesda's part. MS allowing it to be released was an enormous failure on MS's part and certainly has me questioning if they are capable of making proper calls in the console market. This title is not close to being ready for release on any console, the fact that MS allowed it demonstrates to me their extremely poor decission making and inability to comprehend what it takes to make it in this market. I have stated and honestly felt that there is no way MS would allow the kind of disaster PC gaming is to reach into console gaming, obviously they will and already have started to allow it. I was clearly wrong giving MS credit where they certainly don't deserve any. Morrowind should have been canned, there is no excuse for this type of sub par bug riddled crap to land on a console.

 

[bbot]

Ben,

You sound surprised by the constant crashing. I find that odd, because that was the biggest complaint about it when it was first released. I have Morrowind and have NEVER experienced ANY crashes. But then, I don't play for extended periods of time, like eight hours straight. By the way you're slamming Morrowind, I wonder how you'll judge Blinx ("damn buggy camera", "too difficult", "enemies look too boring", etc.)?