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

Jezuz, you talk as if Microsoft was handeling the port themselves! I don't understand how these notions about Microsoft, PC games and the Xbox continue to thrive after the release of console-only gems like Amped, NFL Fever, Quantum Redshift, and PGR.

And Oni, Half-Life, Quake 3, Tribes, and Medal of Honor are all shadows of their former selves on the PS2. Atleast with Xbox Morrowind you're getting exactly the same game--just with a below average frame rate.

 

Don't mean to troll... but Logic? What's that?

 

Ben:

Yeah, after looking through the first post on that thread again it's nothing really conclusive (just by showing the wireframe outlines pokeing through.) I seem to remember someone doing a benchmark with stuff like hyper-z on and off, but it might not have been in that thread. It's been a while since I looked at (and really cared about) morrowind's performance. Well, whatever it is they are using, it certainly seems like they could be doing it better. With the amount of overdraw in that game, you'd think cards with HSR should be doing atleast somewhat decently.

Btw, did you ever get annoyed with the journal? It got *really* annoying having an important quest put in there, then trying to find it after 10 hours of gameplay. My journal for my lvl 20something character is like over 200 pages.

Nite_Hawk

 

I gave up playing the game after about 35-40 hours (Xbox). The quests were never compelling enough for me to continue slogging my way through it, especially as I was trying desperately hard not to cheat. Perhaps if there were some animated cut sequences placed here and there I would have kept going but since there was nothing to "truly" let me know what the major quests were I still wasn't sure what was going on some of the time.

As for the whole reviewing out-of-season issue from earlier (better late than never), I often think that if there was a required 3 month delay on reviews then the scores would be more reflective of the game and less of some of the hype and excitement surrounding it. Hell, MW was a nice addition to the Xbox because it actually had some length to it and there was nothing else around worth looking at (GunVal was just too damn hard). You can only play Halo so often. It was either for this reason or the fact that it was impossible to fix these problems that it got pushed through the way it did.

Now here's my question/comment (please bear with me, I'm new at all this). Could it be that the slowdown occurs because the engine is actually drawing everything in a specific area regardless as to whether or not the character can see it? I don't think it matters if its btf or ftb rendering, I just think that the engine is drawing everything and not even bothering to check to see if there's any possibility that you can see it and then deciding whether or not to render. This could explain why you can see the arms of various enemies through walls, especially in the crypts. They were drawn in when you entered that floor of the crypt regardless of their own position or the number of walls or doors between the two of you. It could also explain my biggest pet peeve (outside of the fact that the gameplay sucked, the story was bad, and a few dozen other things): the fact that there were draw distance issues in Vivec's covered hallways (the sloped ones). I couldn't understand why there was "fog" at the end of a plain brown-walled hallway with no npcs in sight. I can only assume that it was still drawing the entire area I was either walking from or towards it. I'm not sure how this would interplay with the object location/recognition scheme that they seem to be using.

Here's my other question. Why bother to build a do-anything-go-anywhere style of game if the only way to complete it is to follow a specific walkthrough? I mean give me a break. Why lie and make a crappy game when you could tell the truth and make a bit more decent of one.

 

Yeah, I finished Morrowind and then cut the DVD into as many little pieces as I could, I was so pissed off. I never had any of the faulty quest logic or disappearing NPC problems, but about halfway through the game it began crashing literally every five minutes. I couldn't even walk through certain regions, like anywhere outdoors in or near Vivec or Ebonheart, or in or near Dren Plantation, without the game auto-crashing with 100% certainty.

As for having to walk a lot of places, it's not that bad. I hardly had to walk anywhere, except on a few wilderness missions, and even then the Boots of Blinding Speed got me where I needed to go quickly and painlessly. And you can use a combination of teleportation, boats, silt striders, and scrolls of Almsilvi and Divine Intervention to get you to just about any town or city in the game.

 

I thought of another reason that I'm wrong this morning. If I was right then looking at the ground to walk shouldn't increase the framerate like it does. Oh well, at least I helped provide this week's zoo moment (look mommy, it's a newbie!).

Isn't that how PGR manages to keep a high frame rate (well, that and texture swapping)? I still don't understand why Bathesdasoft didn't bother to code that way but then again maybe my newbieicity is just affecting my brain to think that it would probably save time, effort, and fan headaches.

 

Same problem as fbg1 here now.. this is the PC version.

Blue screens almost all the time now after never blue screeming once in about 20 hrs of play... buggery