Dark Souls II - New Interview & Video

Couchpotato

Part-Time News-bot
Joined
October 1, 2010
Messages
36,178
Location
Spudlandia
Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviewed Tak Miyazoe to talk about cheaters, lack of mod support, and the port of the PC version of Dark Souls II.

RPS: How much did you focus on optimization for DSII? Will it run well on a broad spectrum of machines?

Miyazoe: We have put a lot of emphasis and focus on optimization for Dark Souls II so that players can have a smooth, in-depth experience on a wide range of platforms including the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. We did our best to allow players with a wide range of PC specs to enjoy the game without cutting away the importance of the high sense of achievement or the connections felt on the online space.

RPS: For which specific reasons did you delay the PC version? What specific aspects of the port required more development time? PC ports tend to get delayed frequently, but no one ever really talks about why. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons. Other times it’s… questionable.

Miyazoe: We wanted to make sure we provide the most important PC centric features such as improved texture graphics, higher frame rates and also keyboard/mouse mapping controls. We tried to incorporate as much feedback from the PC fans, and spent the extra time in development to deliver the genuine Dark Souls II experience on the PC platform.
Since we're talking about the port From Software has posted information on the games forum about the launch issues. Here is a small sample of the forum post.

We want to use this post as a placeholder to give you updates on any outstanding issues players may be having with the game. We also wanted to share with you the best way to get in touch with our support team.

Thank you everyone for helping to identify any issues. We'll be working hard to escalate and investigate any problems you're having. We will also continue to monitor these forums for any further issues.
And to finish the news-bit jhwisner sent in a link for a video from TotalBiscuit.



TotalBiscuit takes a quick look at Dark Souls 2, discussing mainly the port features.
More information.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,178
Location
Spudlandia
I downloaded this from Steam yesterday. Having a weird problem with it. Some items in my inventory don't appear. I see the little pedestal for inventory items but not the actual item. If I play long enough, NPCs and monsters go invisible too. They are there, but I just can't see them. I googled this but apparently I'm the only one on the planet with this problem since I don't see any bug reports about it.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,897
Location
Oregon
Bizarre to say the least.

Do you have an AMD card ?

Last I was checking (I've gone completely black after starting the game beyond checking the watch a couple of times) some "early adopters" like myself had some crashes and such and most of them seemed to have AMD cards. Never heard a weird bug like yours though…

P.S. here is a thread to watch with issues and fixes. Apparently has some things for mouse input latency too.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
1,734
sorry can't help, the game has actually been 100% stable for me.

I also download the logitech software for my mouse and have mapped the standard attack keys to the LMB and RMB and the heavy attack keys to 2 side buttons. Then I mapped the left and right mouse clicks to 2 other side buttons. This has gotten rid of any mouse lag and still enables me to use my mouse to navigate the UI menus.

Also I stopped downsampling and now just run at 1920x1080 and that seemed to get rid of all the lag. Although I shouldn't be lagging with 2 titans, hopefully nvidia will release an sli profile for the game.

As for the video I wish people would spend more time with the K&M controls instead of just looking to see if there are key bindings and running in circles a bit, then declaring that k&m are ok and switching to a controller.

There are some serious shortcomings to K&M support, from lag to not being able to remap many keys or mouse buttons. They should also compare to dsfix from DS1 not vanilla controls because honestly they were broken and I doubt anyone could have played it without dsfix.

Having said that all the shortcomings can be overcome with some 3rd party software, such as I have done or some people are using AutoHotkey.
 
Also I stopped downsampling and now just run at 1920x1080 and that seemed to get rid of all the lag. Although I shouldn't be lagging with 2 titans, hopefully nvidia will release an sli profile for the game.

You mean input Lag I presume? That is very odd. Driver issue I am sure. Other than the very minor one from the mouse (not a big issue in my setup) I run the game Dsampled from 1620p HBAO+ sgssaa and Durante's SweetFX profile(*) etc and its as smooth as butter on a single OCed GTX780.

Its either that or I am just completely insensitive to that stuff :S

(* puts the torch gameplay right back in ;) )
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
1,734
Didn't buy the game but watched TB's vid where he compares mouse (stutter) and controller (fluid) rotation. Dunno in fact if I'll buy it at all… Rocks I've seen on that vid look worse than ones in Risen 2, and if this is not RPG, and IIRC it isn't, they could at least compete on gfx whoring.

The game crashes on start. Just seen a few posts on my local IT newspaper forum.
Seems it's not a rare problem, devs made a thread on steam with possible solutions to the problem and it's updated constantly:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/236430/discussions/0/558754259683457381/

Before anyone jumps to a conclusion…
A bug like this will get addressed eventually and is nothing negative, it's impossible to predict something like this on a game release as QA can't have every existing hardware combination during the test process.
Do not mix this post with my hatred on never patched crapload of nongamecrashing bugs in other games.
Besides, I've seen ppl with just one (decent though) card saying it runs smooth as in JonNik's case, so there. I believe they did the job good, but well, the release version is not perfect and they're trying to sort it out.

Sorry TMG I haven't seen anyone reporting a problem like the one you have. :(
If I do, I'll pass the info. Maybe a file got corrupted during the download and verification would help?
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
I have an NVIDIA GTX 670. In addition to things being invisible I too think I'm having the 'crash' on start. But the game doesn't seem to crash per se, it just endlessly cycles through game tips but the game never actually starts. I am able to ctrl-alt-del out.

Honestly, I haven't had trouble like this with a game for a very long time. My PC can even handle resource hogs like Skyrim with all the official texture upgrades pretty decently.

I've been pretty busy with Diablo 3 + Expansion so I'll wait for a patch before pursuing this game further. Thanks all for the feedback and the link to the bugs list.

EDIT ADD


Interesting I just noticed this at the above link:

2. Invisible bloodstains, messages, and items Some cases seem to be caused by DS2 using an integrated graphics card rather than the primary graphics card.

That is what I am experiencing except invisibility also extends to NPCs. I was wondering around one area and all the sudden noticed the 'Talk' option become available. Hit my button to talk and found out there was a vendor standing there. Went through his dialog and looked at his wares ok, but I could not see him at all.

I do not have an integrated graphics card though… so I'm proof this isn't just about integrated graphics cards.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,897
Location
Oregon
Sorry TMG I haven't seen anyone reporting a problem like the one you have. :(If I do, I'll pass the info. Maybe a file got corrupted during the download and verification would help?

These things happen I feel pretty indifferent about it right now because I'm patient and busy with other games. From Software has been around a long time I'm fairly confident they'll get it all sorted out.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,897
Location
Oregon
You mean input Lag I presume? That is very odd. Driver issue I am sure. Other than the very minor one from the mouse (not a big issue in my setup) I run the game Dsampled from 1620p HBAO+ sgssaa and Durante's SweetFX profile(*) etc and its as smooth as butter on a single OCed GTX780.

Its either that or I am just completely insensitive to that stuff :S

(* puts the torch gameplay right back in ;) )

Some camera lag at 2560x1440.

Probably wouldn't be noticed by most but I'm very sensitive to any lag or hitches or anything really. That's why I have 2 titans to not deal with any of that.
 
Back
Top Bottom