Slashdot Mirror
When PC Ports of Console Games Go Wrong
A post up at Gamasutra complains about the lack of effort put into the PC ports of some console games. The author picks on the unimpressively-reviewed Ninja Blade in particular: "Just as a quick guide to what we're dealing with here: when you create a new save file at the start of Ninja Blade on the PC, it warns you not to 'turn off your console.' Yes, Ninja Blade is one of those conversions: not so much converted as made to perfunctorily run on a different machine. In-game, you're asked to press A, B, X and Y in various sequences as part of Ninja Blade's extraordinary abundance of quick-time events. Whether you have an Xbox 360 pad plugged in or not, the game captions these button icons with text describing the PC equivalent controls. Only it doesn't always do that. Sometimes, you're left staring at a giant, pulsating, green letter A, and no idea what to do with it." What awful ports have you had the misfortune to experience?
The new Prince of Persia reboot ensured that I won't buy a PC game from Ubisoft ever again. It suffered from the same "Let's fill the UI with references to console-controller buttons" issue.
Please show me a single port of console game to pc, which didn't show these problems.... in over 20 years i believe its less than half a dozen
Even quite successful series like gta suffer from these mistakes
... on PC requires a "crysis ready" machine.
Will not run properly on a P4 2.8 + Radeon X1950 pro, runs ok on a C2D + radeon 47something.
No way to turn off the background animations, menu navigation is extremely slow, the game seems to be a console version running in a console emulator...
No surprise people are turning to Fofix.
Hmm, let's see. USB is a bit of a turd sometimes...
*ducks*
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
The PC port of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance was not bad, it was horrible!
You had to map the keyboard/mouse/joystick to the Playstation 2 buttons via a config tool. I also never got the graphics to display correctly.
When Gears of War's PC port was first released, it was:
1) buggy
2) crashy
3) released A YEAR LATER than the xbox version
The crashy part was fixed, iirc about 2 months after release by a patch.
As you can imagine, the sales for this port were a little slow. Video game companies being video game companies chalked this up to piracy. To them the fact that the game was a shitty port released a full year after the original with dated graphics and all couldn't have POSSIBLY been a reason.
When time comes around to release Gears of War 2 - cliffyB says there's no plans for a port because the first one was just pirated too much...
*.sig
The fact that it would crash at the required Golden Saucer chocobo race in windows newer than 98. Also the fact that Eidos didnt give a rats ass to provide a patch for it.
Im a troll because I disagree with you.
Or Zero Wing?
I think the worst example has to be Ghostbusters. The console versions are fairly good and somewhat quirky, if ultimately flawed, third person shooters. The PC version is actually broken. As in, it can't even reasonably be described as "working". If you want to install to a drive other than c:\ you're out of luck. If you have anything other than "generic Windows sound card" drivers installed, you won't be hearing any voices in-game. And some of the early fights are essentially unbeatable without cheating, due to collision detection and clipping issues. Oh, and it does the whole "console controller analogues" thing.
There are plenty of other awful examples. The Prince of Persia reboots have been mentioned (justly so) and I think the more recent installments in the Tomb Raider franchise also deserve a mention. Last Remnant is another good example; Square-Enix titles have never been particularly kindly treated on the PC anyway. Fire one of these up on even a top end PC with an Xbox controller plugged in and it's still very much apparent that you're playing the "second best" version of the game.
That said, there are plenty of decent ports out there. While I know others disagreed, Fallout 3 felt pretty good to me on the PC. Mass Effect 2 likewise feels as though they've spent a lot of time optimising the PC version so that it feels at home on the platform. In fact, there are even a few cases where it is the console version that feels like a nasty port. Pretty much any RTS that makes it onto the consoles can be chalked up in that category. The recent AvP game looks and feels far better on the PC than on the consoles; the Predator is an over-complicated nightmare to control on any platform, but the PC version does work out somewhat less toxic.
Most games I can think of that got ported from console to PC, suffers from a lot of issues.
They all have one or more in common:
- Lack of configuration
- Extremely high hardware requirements
- Bad mouse control (acceleration, non-configurable sensitivity etc) Example: Mass Effect 2 got THREE settings for mouse. And it's STILL very high on Low.
- Low FOV
- Difficulty setting too low for PC (it's easier when you actually have a mouse to aim with in FPS)
But these issues are usually something that can get patched eventually.
The most annoying thing about ports is this:
They usually make a direct port of the game. What works on console, DOES NOT ALWAYS WORK ON PC!
On PC, I got an entire keyboard of keys. Allow me to freaking bind actions to em, don't give me 3 "command wheels" or whatever.
Don't make me "tap" a button to perform a action. Who thought of that?
I can go on with numerous game design issues, but I think everyone gets my points here.
When porting a game to PC, there are certain elements you just have to redesign.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
I remember playing Megaman X for PC and I was pretty impressed with how well adapted it was to the keyboard. It did away with the whole 16-digit code system of "saving," and in lieu there were actual saved games. Controls were pretty easily changeable (though I used the same setup I do for SNES emus that I normally use. That being said, I've played a couple of the latter PC ports of MMX series and they were ok, though not much different from the original. So I guess I would say that Capcom had the dualism down pat.
What you say?
Starting out with more bugs than a jungle, and the only patches available being on gamecopyworld.com
And then having up to 3 seconds of input lag (time between pressing a key, and the car reacting).
But only when you saw how crappy the graphics were, and how the game was slow like a dog, did you know that it was a console port.
The graphics card was irrelevant. The only thing that counter, was if you had more than 2 cores.
Because apparently, they implemented the PS3 vector processors in the CPU, instead of the vastly more powerful graphics cards.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
As a games developer, its really pisses me off too.
Thing is the word "port" is a misnomer. Since in development dev kits are rare and expensive so only the more senior guys get them or you have to share.
This means there is (and must) always a working PC build on the go. Yep, all console games start life as PC games, you don't code directly on the console, your in Visual studio. Also a lot of the testing is done on PC as its a hell of a lot easier to debug and for large periods of devlopment your console builds might not even be working. For instance on our AAA title the Playstation 3 build spends half of its time utterly dead. (Fyi the Playstation 3 is a terrible console and is actually less powerful than a 360, the graphics power is especially poor)
So there's no excuse for putting out a bad PC release, its just lazyness. or more likely bad producers and their corporate overlords dailing to listen to the concerns of the designers and pushing out a shoddy product.
One fo the problems also is when the art is created for the console. Art in a decent environment should be compiled together choosing correct sizes, resolutions, compressions for the platform. This often isnt done. This means that a texture that looks nice and crisp on the console will look utter pants on the pc at 1920*1080 as it will be having to upscale the mips.
What should be done is that each platform should have people responsable for it at each step of its production. That would ensure you don't end up with terrabad "ports". Try pitching that to management tho. :(
-Anon because I don't want to be fired. :D
Despite their hard effort (or lack thereof) to make the game piss off PC owners as much as possible, the game was still awesome.
- FOV settings, the fov is related to the distance to the viewer. On a PC, people is near the screen, so the FOV sould be higuer, is just a number, but even 90 million dollars videogames forget to change it on the PC. Out of lazyness, is not modified. (note: It may need to recompile some maps, and edit some weapons a littel). .NET, Windows Games For Live, etc.
- Stupid messages "Don't shutdown the machine"
- Savepoints, but thats parts of the mechanic, and can't be fixed
- Autoaim, thats helps pad users, because you can't properly walk and aim on a pad (seems) so need autoaim. With a mouse, you don't need autoaim. Out of lazyness, is not deactivated.
- HORRIBLE server browsers or lack of server browser. Idiot-box with a single button. Lack of dedicated servers. A whole horrible bad network experience, with not community sense and not respect to the PC values of freedom and user control of the experience.
- The game greets you with a "Press ENTER". This is a arcade saloon artifact from 1982. It has not reason at all on a PC.
- Use of bloated middleware.
- Unoptimized code. Code written for the console, that runs poorly on the pc.
- Smallish maps. Since the consoles are serius ram limits (like 512 MB or less) some maps are really small, and you see lots of "load screens". On the PC proper games use streaming to have not load screens, or the maps are giganteous large.
- Quick Time Events. These things work ok with a pad, on a keyboard are something like a "learn where the A and B key are on your keyboard" minigames. Don't work at all on the PC.
- Weird resolutions. If your game don't support 1280x1024, your game is shit, cause this is a normal (low) resoultion for lots of LCD. This force people to use lower resolutions that looko blurry, and with enormo pixels.
- Lack of configuration options. The console people like FEW options, the PC people like MORE options. Add a FOV setting, and autoaim settings, a resolution setting, a bloom setting.
- Use of the UNREAL engine. This engine don't support things like AA, so you have to force AA on the driver, but it don't work on some engines. Games like Borderlands suffer of this. Unreal could be a decent engine for consoles, but is BAD for the PC, because is optimized for the consoles.
I could continue, but I am wasting my time here. since most of these problems are out of lazyness. Disabling autoaim sould take a well managed company only 1 hour of time, If people don't know you have do disable autoaim for the PC, what the hell are you doing near a "conversion to PC" proyect?
-Woof woof woof!
I'm really shocked Borderlands wasn't included in the original article. Someone in another forum posted "i heard they finally fixed borderlands so you can play without unblocking 200 ports" - the response he got back was less than kind and more than happy to correct him. Great game, greater still with mutiplayer, but completely ruined when you can't play with three of your best pals. Also, lol @ gamespy as a matchmaking service. I felt like I'd traveled back to 1999.
In other news, the vestigial xbox360 code for L4D1 allowed you to play the PC version split screen with a friend, playing as player2 using a xbox360-come-USB controller and some well timed console commands.
moox. for a new generation.
Every time I see it, I curse both Ion Storm and Microsoft.
The 64Mb memory of Xbox lead to room-sized levels. I had a feeling that game designers were more concerned about advertising this console graphics (oh, look, we have shaders and are not afraid to use them), than actually making a decent game. The six-button controller crippled the interface. The teenager target group lead to oversimplified gameplay (same ammo for pistol and flamethrower, WTF?) and a stupid plot (virtual Britney Spears clone is remarkable).
And despite all that, it ran really slow on my PC, which had four times more RAM and a better videocard than this X-crap.
The new Prince of Persia reboot ensured that I won't buy a PC game from Ubisoft ever again. It suffered from the same "Let's fill the UI with references to console-controller buttons" issue.
I had the same problem if I started the game from a shortcut I created to the executable. If I used the launcher from the game disk, all the UI references to the console controls went away.
With respect to the port, I played it on both the PC and the PS3 and enjoyed the PC version since the graphics were very crisp compared to the console and I like the mouse/keyboard combo.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
"Summon Lich" vs. "Summon Rich"
I always kinda liked that one, I imagined some guy named Rich in a Grim Reaper costume appearing to smite my enemies.
Obviously, the orientation of the USB cable is in a state of superposition until you make an observation, collapsing the quantum wave function to a single orientation, thus allowing it to fit....
Knowledge != Intelligence
Kinda like this guy? http://www.lfgcomic.com/page/3
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
"All your base are belong to us." Here's the whole sad scene from that terrible game: (zoom 400% so you can read it):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/AllYourBaseAnimated.gif
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The pc port was actually pretty good, few bugs that bothered me, but one gigantic, huge, blaring flaw...
It was really really really really super easy. It was the exact same gameplay as the PS2 version (which I also owned) but mouse+keyboard is so far superior to the console, that every single gun might as well have been "the golden gun" from goldeneye. I am serious, those super hard missions where you had to take out 900 guys and you had to try 1000 times on PS2 and still you just barely pass it after breaking a controller or two.. cakewalk when you can actually aim.
The hellicopter mission, where you are taking passes on the mob base, with a tinfoil hellicopter... That mission was the bane of the ps2, finishing with more than 5% of the chopper health was a feat of god... On PC, 99% health was like oops, LOL I should not have made pizza rolls while playing that mission.
It really opened my eyes to the common notion at the time that the gap was narrowing between console fps/3ps and PC, it was just not the case. Still isn't, because a controller will never (barring comprehensive design changes, and I am not sure motion control will ever quite cut it)have enough precision and reaction.
It was really weird having a pretty nice port that was totally useless, and it really turned me off of the PS2 version, made it seem like "Nintendo hard" Hard because of gimped controlls not because of good design/creativity.
Bioshock 2 does not support the 360 pad
>>>unblocking 200 ports
Stories like this and the Slashdot summary are why I made an attempt at PC gaming in the 90s, but then quit. Computer gaming was fun in the era of Atari 800s, Commodore 64s, Atari STs, and Commodore Amigas, because you had FIXED hardware that just worked (and worked extremely well - better than the PCs/Macs). No need to mess with drivers or cards or other nonsense. Gaming on those old 8/32 bit machines was plug-and-play easy.
Computers are no longer that easy to use, so I bought my first console ever with the PS2 and Gamecube. Where PC gaming had been a major headache, the consoles once again returned the simplicity that I experienced with my Commodores and Amigas. Plug and play. No headaches.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Dear GOD YES. I was wondering when someone would mention Star Trek: Legacy...hey, lets not put in ANY in-game system for rebinding keys, reference the 360 controller in all the tool tips, oh and not bother binding these 4 keys that you NEED to complete the campaign, oh and it is a space game in 2-D space. (Sure you can fly "up" about 10 feet)
Having been personally involved in coding several of several ports mentioned in these comments, to and from a wide variety of different platforms, the way it usually works is that the publisher will outsource the development to company like the one I work for. The schedules are always very aggressive and tight so unfortunately you know what the end result of that is. It's not like we're trying to make a bad product, we do the best we can given the constraints. Personally I find the job very rewarding and fun and intellectually challenging, even if the end result isn't always that great. I get to see a lot of code from a lot of different companies and it's quite interesting. The challenge is, basically, here's a big mess of code of uncertain quality, get it to work on another platform in 6 months. I *always* give the publishers realistic timelines, which they ignore and we still wind up having to do it 6 months. The only way to get a real quality product on multiple platforms is for the original dev team to develop for all those platforms themselves, or give us enough time to do the port. A lot of times we'll get the contract a year or more after the original game has shipped, we've only occasionally be able to develop the ports simultaneous the original development.