Any experiences yet?
http://www.eidosinteractive.co.uk/support/patchinfo.html?ptid=67
Release date is September 03???
http://www.eidosinteractive.co.uk/support/patchinfo.html?ptid=67
Release date is September 03???
Tomb Raider v52
- Thread starter Borsti
- Start date
According to the patch release there is "No bug fixes" and the benchmarking mode has been removed. To me that suggests that the results would be consistent with the 49 release, hence results from that would still be an accurate reflection pf performance withing the game when utilising eiterh the 49 or 52 release.
I've only seen that happen if you didn't have the CD in place when you start the demo.
SvP said:It seems that the benchmarking mode is officially unofficial now.
Do you intend to use Tomb Raider benchmarks in future nevertheless?
There is a benchmarking mode in the shipping CD version, so even if you didn't use the 49 patch you could just use the benchmark mode directly out of the box if you wanted. I would suggest that this would be worse idea of those that wanted this patch pulled because the performance on certain hardware is even worse under the shipping release.
Patches break recorded demos. If you recorded a demo using v42 and patch the game to v49, demo is broken (with the result as you described it, among other undesirable results). Same thing with recording a demo using v49 and then patching the game to v52.Borsti said:
This is a known fact (well, at least to me).
I'm not surprised this happened...but I didn't know Eidos was so stupid...but you learn new things every day... Imagine that--release a DX9 game, which you market as a "DX9 game"--and then declare it isn't a suitable software platform for taking a look at how it runs its DX9 features on competing "DX9-capable" 3d hardware. Brilliant strategy. Why'd they bother with DX9 support at all--bother to market it as such, at least? Another case of shoot self in foot, I guess.
Maybe it's simpler, though--maybe nVidia called and told them to yank the DX9 benchmark or they'd yank their marketing money. Considering how the game has been poorly received, this isn't so far fetched. I really hope the Paul fellow there wasn't so thick between the ears that nVidia was able to convince him that the bench had to go because it was all a conspiracy cooked up between B3d and Core to "make nVidia look bad." Please, I hope no one in the company is that dense. As I recall nVidia said the same thing about FutureMark not so long ago--so those are the two possibilities I consider for why this thing went down. Pretty pathetic, either way. IMO, it was very unwise for Eidos to have ever said anything about any IHV, and it would have been better to say nothing and just let the chips fall where they may.
Imagine that--release a DX9 game, which you market as a "DX9 game"--and then declare it isn't a suitable software platform for taking a look at how it runs its DX9 features on competing "DX9-capable" 3d hardware. Brilliant strategy. Why'd they bother with DX9 support at all--bother to market it as such, at least? Another case of shoot self in foot, I guess.Maybe it's simpler, though--maybe nVidia called and told them to yank the DX9 benchmark or they'd yank their marketing money. Considering how the game has been poorly received, this isn't so far fetched. I really hope the Paul fellow there wasn't so thick between the ears that nVidia was able to convince him that the bench had to go because it was all a conspiracy cooked up between B3d and Core to "make nVidia look bad." Please, I hope no one in the company is that dense. As I recall nVidia said the same thing about FutureMark not so long ago--so those are the two possibilities I consider for why this thing went down. Pretty pathetic, either way. IMO, it was very unwise for Eidos to have ever said anything about any IHV, and it would have been better to say nothing and just let the chips fall where they may.
StealthHawk
Regular
WaltC said:
Tomb Raider may not have been well received, but it has still sold well, just like every Tomb Raider game has
I'd asked Core Design the following right after the EIDOS guy's statements were posted at GamersDepot :
I'll refrain from giving you guys the answers (not terribly interesting and thoroughly expected ones)... just wanted you guys to know I was expecting any possible post-v49 patches to remove benchmarking.Reverend said:
StealthHawk said:Tomb Raider may not have been well received, but it has still sold well, just like every Tomb Raider game has
I think Eidos might have a different interpretation of "sold well"...
I wish I could recall where I read the article, but after the game shipped there was little love between Eidos and Core because of the very poor reviews the game was getting and its initial sales funk (measured only by what Eidos had wanted and hoped to see--not in absolute terms.) My own thought is that had the game been selling exceptionally well Eidos would have had no comment on the included benchmarking. As it is, I think someone there got the not-so-bright idea that owners of nVidia 3d cards were overlooking the game because of reading reports of its poor DX9 performance on nVidia DX9 products, and so pulling the benchmark from the software and repudiating it was done to stimulate sales. I think they were way wide of the mark--what has hurt the sales the most are the negative reviews it's gotten which people have read. How and why Eidos might ever think that removing the benchmark would stimulate sales is totally beyond me, and there simply is no other motive they might have had for doing it (unless it's nVidia marketing money--but then, if sales were great that'd be of little concern, too.) There are so many other examples of how nVidia cards perform running DX9 features that comparatively the TR bench was a drop in the bucket. It's either very dumb, or very desperate, when a software publisher begins thinking it's his job to promote a specific IHV's hardware instead of promoting his own software.
That's true to some extent, but TR : AoD is very special in that it was the first DX9 game. For months, the Nvidia crowd had been pulling wool on their collective ears/eyes by chanting the "synthetic benchmarks don't mean anything" mantra. And the first widly available, at least moderatly known game, DX9 game not only confirms every synthetic benchmark finding and then more, but also is part of Nvidia's marketing campaign, and features CG support... Talk about a harsh blow.
WaltC said:StealthHawk said:Tomb Raider may not have been well received, but it has still sold well, just like every Tomb Raider game has
I think Eidos might have a different interpretation of "sold well"...
My own thought is that had the game been selling exceptionally well Eidos would have had no comment on the included benchmarking. As it is, I think someone there got the not-so-bright idea that owners of nVidia 3d cards were overlooking the game because of reading reports of its poor DX9 performance on nVidia DX9 products, and so pulling the benchmark from the software and repudiating it was done to stimulate sales. I think they were way wide of the mark--what has hurt the sales the most are the negative reviews it's gotten which people have read. How and why Eidos might ever think that removing the benchmark would stimulate sales is totally beyond me, and there simply is no other motive they might have had for doing it (unless it's nVidia marketing money--but then, if sales were great that'd be of little concern, too.) There are so many other examples of how nVidia cards perform running DX9 features that comparatively the TR bench was a drop in the bucket. It's either very dumb, or very desperate, when a software publisher begins thinking it's his job to promote a specific IHV's hardware instead of promoting his own software.
Conspiracy theory time....... maybe with the 'low' sales of the game NV has stumped up a lot of cash to bundle it with NV36/38/40 thus clearing the warehouses of the game and 'increasing' sales making Core, Eidos etc look a lot better during the end of year reoprts and sales figures when they next come around?... It's feasible at least... for bundled games with the hardware what else has NV got apart from D3 in X months time?
CorwinB said:
Agreed, and while I can certainly understand nVidia's position as being congruent with the one it's had all year (to undermine or eliminate information which portrays the performance of its products negatively), I really don't understand Eidos getting involved in nVidia's PR problems. To the degree that they do that they associate themselves with nVidia and, like everyone else who has done that this year, can expect to share a similar fate.
If I was a software publisher I'd say nothing at all about distinct IHVs. Look at the "EA bundling deal" with nVidia that was talked about a lot earlier this year. All the talk comes from nVidia--and all of the press releases, too--I couldn't find a single press release on EA's site which even mentioned nVidia by name, much less in the context of the kind of "exclusive" software-optimization spin nVidia invented. And rightly so--a publisher's concerned with the API--favoring one IHV over another publicly is a bad idea, since it always alienates one side or the other, and alienating customers is not what software publishing is about. Eidos doing this, as a publisher, is very bad form, IMO. They are likely to alienate many who will see the removal of the benchmark as either a slam for or against an IHV, or else as an effort to obscure some truth or other. To have done what they did seems a total no-win, to me.
Developers, though, as opposed to publishers, are in a different position. Obviously Valve's publisher (Vivendi?) had no objection to Valve's comments and is rightfully not injecting itself into the picture. This is the proper frame of attitude for a publisher to have, IMO.
The fact that TR:AoD was the "first" DX9 game to be produced should have been seen as a plus by Eidos for the marketing of the game. The performance of nV3x in the game under the DX9 code path is not the product of Core's code base nor is it the product of Eidos as a publisher. By the same token, the fact that the R3x0 runs it so much better than nV3x is not the product of either company, either. And, as I recall from reading the TR stuff here (I don't own the game) the default code path setup for nV3x for the game is DX8, which produces the same general frame rate performance as R3x0 gets on the DX9 path.
So, it's just very, very strange for me to see a publisher inject itself into the situation like this. Certainly, I can't see how Eidos thinks removing the benchmark will stimulate sales. Just very odd.
I'd like to know from people who have looked at the v52 patch: does the read.me even indicate that the benchmark has been removed? From what I've read about it that change was not described. If they took out the benchmark and said nothing about it, this will go down as one of the oddest things I've ever seen happen. If anything, the built-in benchmark might have been considered a *feature* of the game that would have enhanced its value for customers--and might have itself *stimulated* sales of the game.
I would give a lot to understand just what Paul Baldwin was thinking when he made his little statement about the game not being worth a damn as a DX9 benchmark--especially since the benchmark didn't say anything new or revealing about DX9 hardware that wasn't already well known. In the same way that I think Vivendi is smart in playing up the DX9 factor for the sale of HL2, I think Eidos was plum stupid to play it down. Strictly from a publisher's point of view, of course.
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