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

[Mr. Angry Pants]

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.

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.

 

[BenSkywalker]

bbot-

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 think people should bitch excessively if a console game crashes once on them. I had no idea that any company would let such a load of shit pass into publishing on a console.

I have Morrowind and have NEVER experienced ANY crashes.

How far in the game have you made it? I didn't experience a single crash until I was around level 30 IIRC, had completed about two dozen guild quests, taken over a house and filled it with loot, had Azura's Soul Gem and had nearly every item I owned with a permanent constant effect enchantment(Azura's Soul Gem, Summon Golden Saint spell and a mastery of alchemy(not enchantment) make this fairly easy). Now, having topped out my attributes and acquired considerably more goods the game won't stay up an running for me(it went downhill pretty fast after it started crashing). I have gotten rid of almost everything I owned, emptied out the house I had filled with loot, I can manage to get the game to run for almost an hour at a time provided I stand in one spot out of town, rest for three days straight, save to a new file, shut down the XBox, play a few other games, then boot in to the memory management screen and erase all but my most recent save file. If you are far into the game and haven't had a crash, you are the first person I've hear that has done so. I've scoured a dozen different Morrowind/XBox forums and have found that it has always been just a matter of time before the game flakes out on people.

By the way you're slamming Morrowind, I wonder how you'll judge Blinx ("damn buggy camera", "too difficult", "enemies look too boring", etc.)?

How the hell does a game crashing every five minutes relate to another game's gameplay mechanics? Please explain out the logic on that one.

 

[Tahir2]

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

 

[Nite_Hawk]

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

 

[BenSkywalker]

Nite-

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.

Heh, I was ready for it before I started playing the game. The trick is, don't talk to anyone unless you have no active quests going. As of right now I'm right around 200 pages, but Dagoth Ur is dead I'm on level 106 and if I choose to I can kill Vivec in under thirty seconds(fortify attribute potions stack, easy way to make yourself a demi-god if you are so inclined).

 

[Mark Cicero]

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.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Mark-

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.

There are two in the game AFAIK, but one of them occurs after you have 'beaten' the game and the other one doesn't come until you are close to done. After beating the game I went back and started a new game with the intention of beating it as fast as possible and making it so the game wouldn't crash. Managed it in 7 1/2 hours with a singe crash(using the 'back door'/kill Vivec method).

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?

With the XBox if you render front to back the hardware will, oversimplifying a bit, throw away most of what isn't seen. If they had built the engine to render f>b it would have paid large dividends for not only the XBox but also GF3/Radeon and up hardware on the PC(particularly GF3 and R8500 and higher).

 

[fbg1]

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.

 

[Mark Cicero]

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!).

Mark-

With the XBox if you render front to back the hardware will, oversimplifying a bit, throw away most of what isn't seen. If they had built the engine to render f>b it would have paid large dividends for not only the XBox but also GF3/Radeon and up hardware on the PC(particularly GF3 and R8500 and higher).

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.

 

[Tahir2]

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