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No Patch for Dead Rising Fans

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the patch-it-so-that-its-fun dept.

1up is reporting that Capcom has put the kibosh on a patch for Dead Rising, frustrating fans who have complained about the games's almost unreadable text on Standard Definition screens. From the article: "So, the question is, will there ever be a patch? Unfortunately, that's a no. 'Due to the amount of text and the size of the patch necessary to change the text, a patch isn't possible for this issue,' said the company. 'We had asked the team if it was even possible but ... due to the scope of what a patch would need to cover, it wasn't possible.' As it stands, no patch is coming for Dead Rising players -- but maybe they'll change their mind if you yell loud enough."

12 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Quick! Someone get an internet petition going! by bunions · · Score: 3, Funny

    In these our modern times, when people need to get something done, they resort to the big guns: internet petitions.

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  2. No real point in doing it... by Bones3D_mac · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... when games become obsolete and irrelevent after about 3 months on the market. Aside from that, the text isn't vital to the gameplay itself. You can still finish the game just fine without it.

    Now if it were one of those 80+ hour RPGs, it could be an important factor. But thats pretty much a niche market here in the US.

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    8==8 Bones 8==8
  3. Long story short.. by The+Living+Fractal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Fans: This game we bought needs to be fixed!

    Publisher: Let me check if we can do that (pretends to be calling some programmer, faint sound of dialtone still audible through whole conversation). Ahh, we're sorry, that simply is not possible at this time. (besides, you already bought it, suckers!! *evil publisher squeal laugh*)

    On another note..
    Someone explain to me how changing out a font or two constitutes a large patch without there first being some ridiculous method of storing said text in the first place? Like maybe storing every dialog box as a separate JPEG...

    TLF

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    1. Re:Long story short.. by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 2, Informative

      As someone who's experienced many of the joys of doing UI on a console, I can say that if its a problem with the font being too small then the issue is probably a big one. If they were smart and had nice UI widgets which wrapped text, put up scrolls and stuff then it would just be a matter of swapping out font files and checking to make sure you didn't crash. If they weren't, well, then you have a problem. Anywhere text is printed you have to go in and recheck in every single language (for a AAA title this could be 11-12 languages). Now, QA time is relatively cheap, but then you have to pay someone to go in and fix these things.

      My guess is they have a bad, kludgy UI system that makes tweaking things difficult. You'd be surprised what UI code looks like in a console game. The pain to fix would take a signifigant amount of manpower vs. what they'd expect to gain. Surprising given the buzz I've heard about it and the fact that such a crippling bug would make a lot of people think twice about picking it up, but then programmers are used to these things. Trust this: somewhere there's a frustrated young UI programmer reading this slashdot story and pulling his hair out going "I told them! I told them!" He's probably responded AC with the "real story" from home so as not to get in trouble :)

  4. Re:Reverse Engineer the Game by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yes, because you'll be taking money away from them by encouraging people to play their game. Oh wait.

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
  5. Dead Rising 2: The Reading of the Dead by Hahnsoo · · Score: 3, Funny

    This probably just means that they are working on the next Dead Rising game, which is functionally identical to the first one, except for the fact that you can actually read the inappropriately Gothic-serif fonts.

  6. Reminds me of a bug in... by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...Rayman DS. Much of the game is in shades of dark brown on black. Completely unplayable. It's as if it was never play tested on a real DS, just on an emulator with a super bright display. Of course they couldn't release a patch for a card - but at least a fix eventually appeared in the form of the DS Lite. People really need to test the final product on consumer grade hardware because these are unbelievably obvious bugs.

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    1. Re:Reminds me of a bug in... by SpectreHiro · · Score: 2, Funny

      The same reason that Smurfs are three apples high and blue.

      Because they're french.

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  7. In a nutshell... by MMaestro · · Score: 4, Informative
    Someone explain to me how changing out a font or two constitutes a large patch without there first being some ridiculous method of storing said text in the first place?

    Short version : Video games don't use wordwrap.

    Long version : Its a hold-over from the 8-bit and 16-bit days, back when text would sometimes take up more memory than the game itself. You commonly hear this problem during fan translations of SNES games. When translated into English, the text would run out of the text box and, in the worst case, off the screen where it was completely unreadable.

  8. Biggest insult of the whole thing by cowwie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The biggest insult keeps getting overlooked by EVERYONE on this. Capcom has refused to patch the game.... that's a slap in the face. The kick in the teeth comes from the fact that the SAME DAY that they announced they have absolutely no intentions of supporting the game.... they're throwing another $3million at the advertising budget to market the game. As long as DR keeps going out the doors, they don't give a crap.
    TV Ad Buys Doubled to $6 Million to Increase National Exposure for Acclaimed Zombie Game

  9. Re:No HD? by AuMatar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why think that? Geeks tend to be tech lovers, but they also tend to be very smart with their money. With the first adaptors being screwed by format changed (HDMI), DRM up the wazoo (broadcast flag), and most of us owning perfectly good TVs already there really isn't a driving reason to move to the new format. Especially since geeks are less likely to watch most TV, and movies aren't truely high def (unless you get a multi-hundred dollar add on, with a format war of its own, rebuy your entire collection in that, and have the right type of connector).

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  10. A brain dead design... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Funny

    'Due to the amount of text and the size of the patch necessary to change the text, a patch isn't possible for this issue,' said the company.

    That's what you get when have a zombie designer and zombie testers instead of hiring real people to think through what they're doing.