Batman Arkham Knight - with x86/GCN consoles, how come we're still getting terrible ports?

[Rodéric]

Oh come on, it's not that hard to get games running fine on PC, I spent my career doing so !
Sure it's easier on Consoles, but it's not *hard* on PC...
The lack of quality control is a real issue though, it might be nice for Steam/MS/Origin/whomever to refuse games if they don't pass quality control, every fucking industry out there has them, except software of course, since it's no industry and noone gives a shit, not even consumers, that's plain wrong and needs to change !

 

[pjbliverpool]

Isn't this what normally happens for games on the PC?

I coudn't speak to the pirating side but genuine PC sales often outsell XBO in AAA games these days.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Mostly I'm surprised at the surprise that another game will need a patch or two before it's up to par. With regard to AAA games this seems to be the norm rather than the exception so the surprise there are issues with the initial release perplex me. We've only just passed the gnashing of teeth phase with the Witcher 3 which had issues on all three platforms. Do people genuinely forget? Is there some form of mass memory loss associated with video gamers?

While I agree with the day 1 vs patched argument, I think the issue here is the sheer extent of the problems with the PC version. This isn't the slight stuttering that some users got in early releases of AC Unity and Farcry 4 (both of which are resolved now btw, at least for me on my lowly GTX670), this is the game being nigh on unplayable on virtually any hardware - even stuttering on the Titan X, while also unfathomably being locked to 30fps.

And the reason for the issues seems to be sadly obvious:

http://www.kitguru.net/gaming/devel...t-pc-port-was-outsourced-to-a-console-studio/

12 people from a console studio handling a PC port.... WTF?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The lack of quality control is a real issue though, it might be nice for Steam/MS/Origin/whomever to refuse games if they don't pass quality control, every fucking industry out there has them, except software of course, since it's no industry and noone gives a shit, not even consumers, that's plain wrong and needs to change !

There are a bunch of industry standards for software, including ISO/IEC 9126, and the standards we apply internally are very rigorus. But not many of the considerations of standards are directly applicable to games (or entertainment software in general) and standard setting is generally an industry-led initiative. I've been involved in defining an ISO standard and it's crazy expensive and the industry have to foot the fill to develop the standard then for ISO (or somebody else) to act as a certification body.

I suspect publishers (and the industry wider) are not yet convinced that this would be money well spent in part, I believe, becuase it's hard to quantify how much money may potentially be lost due to bad ports.

While I agree with the day 1 vs patched argument, I think the issue here is the sheer extent of the problems with the PC version. This isn't the slight stuttering that some users got in early releases of AC Unity and Farcry 4 (both of which are resolved now btw, at least for me on my lowly GTX670), this is the game being nigh on unplayable on virtually any hardware - even stuttering on the Titan X, while also unfathomably being locked to 30fps.

I'll fess up and state I don't know the extent of the PC version problems but what I picked up from Eurogamer and other wistes was that it seemed to run around 30fps with the frame limiting on but went haywire when you switched it off. I look forward to the Digital Foundry analysis.

I do feel your pain, there's nowt more annoying that having a highly anticipated game and not being able to play at what something approaching a reasonable, or even minimal, performance expectation. I must admit fess up and say I'm pretty surprised that such a huge game was given to such a small studio and definitely subscribe to AINets speculaton that maybe the consoel versions were behind schedule (hence the initial delay) which resulted in huge pressure for the porting studio.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Fortunately it wasn't on my wish list anyway so seems I dodged a bullet.

 

[Arwin]

I'm just surprised that with the current "console hardware being so PC" situation we can still speak of a PC port in the first place!

 

[London Geezer]

What I personally find really strange is that this is a UE3 game.

How on earth did they fuck it up so badly that a Titan can't run it properly? Surely a Titan - and a lot of much lesser cards too! - should run any UE3 game effortlessly at 200fps, while preparing dinner and give oral gratification to the player??

Embarrassing.

 

[AlNom]

Something messed up with the memory allocation/handling? The issues happening on all HW point to something very deep in the engine.

 

[Rodéric]

I'm just surprised that with the current "console hardware being so PC" situation we can still speak of a PC port in the first place!

It's because the 3D API is different between all 4 systems. (Wii U, PS4, XBone, PC)

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, this can't be 'standard' Unreal Engine 3, or else you'd have wondered why a twelve man team was needed to change a config file? (and then still mess that up)

 

[homerdog]

Yeah, this can't be 'standard' Unreal Engine 3

Of course not, it's Fucked Up UE3. Wonder how long it will take them to unfuck it.

Truly a pathetic showing but honestly these games wouldn't interest me no matter how well optimized they are. I don't understand their popularity.

 

[pjbliverpool]

And the latest turn in this little internet drama (I'm actually enjoying this)... the game reverts to using DX10 when using Nvidia Gameworks. Yup, you heard that right.

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/repor...rectx-10-when-nvidia-gameworks-are-activated/

I think at this point they need to simply stop selling the game until it's fixed and offer everyone that bought it so far a refund.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Truly a pathetic showing but honestly these games wouldn't interest me no matter how well optimized they are. I don't understand their popularity.

Batman titles from Rocksteady are really fun to play IMO.
They're definitely not your typical movie-game.
The game only gets REALLY boring if you try to be a completionist and spend hundreds of hours trying to find and get all the crap from the Riddler.

I haven't been looking at this title because I already have so many games in the pipeline and I've been really busy, but it is was something I thought I'd enjoy.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Luckily I don't have to play games on launch day. I'll just play many other games before I'll get to this. I'm sure they can fix this and it should be a good game. Plan b is to play it on PS4 if the PC-version will remain broken.

 

[homerdog]

Batman titles from Rocksteady are really fun to play IMO.
They're definitely not your typical movie-game.
The game only gets REALLY boring if you try to be a completionist and spend hundreds of hours trying to find and get all the crap from the Riddler.

I don't care that it's a movie game. The setting, characters, gameplay, graphics - absolutely nothing here is of any interest to me. I Literally wouldn't play it if it were bug free and Rocksteady paid me the $60 asking price.

My taste wrt games isn't generally out of the ordinary which is why I'm surprised this series has so many fans.

 

[Bludd]

I got this game bundled with my 980 Ti. Can you get a refund on a redeemed bundled Steam key?

 

[eastmen]

man this sounds like a horrible port. I guess I will wait for a summer sale to pick it up

 

[VFX_Veteran]

There is NO way that if I was a game developer that I would have allowed this game to pass quality control without expressing my dissatisfaction with the graphics. I'm already a stickler for detail and just not having AO or the rain textures in would have bothered me to no end... I have stopped playing the game until they fix something.

Ironically, they removed my post on FB. It wasn't harsh at all.. basically saying I hope they work 24/7 until the game is fixed. Immediately got a reply from one of the developers griping about over working their employees. Agree with this, but the final product has to be good. If its' not, then I deserve to work until it is good. Film industry is the same. I can't imagine putting a rendered image in front of the heads of WB with no ambient occlusion. Or a rendering artifact in the hair or missing textures and calling it "final". That's just... wrong.

 

[Arwin]

Yes, but they were probably already overworked because managers needed a final revenue boost before the end of the fiscal year to appease stockholders ...

 

[Chris Lux]

About the performance: I am on a i7 4770k, 16GiB RAM and a GeForce 780Ti 3GiB (and an SSD). I have everything maxed (only disabled the light shafts) at 1080p and the game runs very good. I have lifted the 30Hz cap to 60Hz and most of the time I also get this frame rate. Not so much when driving the Batmobile - the frame rate dips here and there but it is not the bad stuttering you can see in some videos...

I am usually very sensitive to fluctuating frame rates but I cannot majorly complain here. Yes, there are effects missing and I miss the TXAA from Arkham Origins but the game is not 'broken' for me on this aging graphics card, to the contrary I am surprised how well it runs....