Dark Souls - PC Performance Analysis

Thaurin said:

Come on. They were upfront about what they were going to be releasing. Don't whine afterwards.

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They never mentioned they planned to release a game that was locked to 1024x720 resolution. I've never even heard of a publisher releasing a game like that within the past ten years.

Fortunately, a modder fixed it within a few hours, but I plan to hold off on this game for a few more months to wait until the mod is fully updated and perhaps pick it up during the Steam winter sale.

CountChocula said:

They never mentioned they planned to release a game that was locked to 1024x720 resolution.

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They absolutely did, very early on..

はい。基本的には忠実な移植になります。解像度に変更はありませんし

But there's probably no developer out there that has been misquoted so many times.. Just the other week i read on a swedish gaming site they they were going to make an easier difficulty setting for DS on PC. But again, this was just a translation error.

khaight said:

Two possible examples from the RPG genre: Risen and Dragon Age: Origins. Both were developed with the PC as primary platform, both received console releases and both console releases were significantly worse than their PC equivalents.

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Thank you.

vurt said:

They absolutely did, very early on..

はい。基本的には忠実な移植になります。解像度に変更はありませんし

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Yes, maybe, but who is able to properly translate this ?

Maybe I become misunderstood in Asian languages as well because no-one is able to properly translate me into these languages ?

Google translate.. it's a pretty simple sentence. But yes, obviously misunderstandings can be caused by bad translations

I'm sorry, but unless they put "very poor port", "requires xbox gamepad" and such in their advertising materials, they don't get a pass just because they were up-front about it. If go to some retail site and look the game up, I don't see anything besides the usual superlatives. Requiring your customers to recall your official statements from months ago just doesn't work, and saying they have no right to complain because they didn't do their research is just foolish, assuming you actually want to continue having customers.

epithumia said:

I'm sorry, but unless they put "very poor port", "requires xbox gamepad" and such in their advertising materials, they don't get a pass

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No publisher in the world gets a pass then because no one would write stuff like that. However i agree it would be nice.

"We might not continue to support this game after the first month because after that sales will decline to the degree that we just don't care. Just so you know."

"Our game sucks, there, we said it. That 85% review on the cover, we payed them. Maybe you could buy it anyways? We have families to support for christ sake!"

"Our game contains over 2000 bugs, a few really serious ones. Yeah, you'll have to wait at least 6 more months for patches if you want a playable game".

etc.

vurt said:

They absolutely did, very early on..

はい。基本的には忠実な移植になります。解像度に変更はありませんし

But there's probably no developer out there that has been misquoted so many times.. Just the other week i read on a swedish gaming site they they were going to make an easier difficulty setting for DS on PC. But again, this was just a translation error.

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You are referring to the Famitsu interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki in April. I was concerned when I read "解像度に変更はありません" which means "there’s no change to the resolution."

However this concern that the game might be locked to 720p for some bizarre reason in an unprecedented display of poor judgement was dispelled by John Papadopolous, the Western journalist who broke the story about the Famitsu interview in DSO - Papadopolous claimed Miyazaki was referring only to the texture and asset resolution with the term "解像度" or kaizoudo, because locking a game at 720p flies in the face of common sense:

UPDATE: Since there is one hell of confusion about it, Miyazaki was obviously referring to the game’s assets when he was talking about the resolution. Sure, Dark Souls PC might not support all kinds of aspect ratios, but you’ll be a fool to think that it will be simply locked to a 1280×720 resolution. No, it will have a nice choice of resolutions, that’s for sure. The game even uses GFWL which means that it HAS to support resolutions up to 1080p. Common sense is common sense. However, the game’s textures will remain the same (aka, same resolution as the console versions, which translates to no HD textures). Our biggest gripe is with the 30fps lock. Let’s not forget that we informed you about this awful lock that was present in NFS: The Run, The Force Unleashed 2 and L.A. Noire. And that is that.

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I cannot see any way to defend this very strange choice made by Namco Bandai, regardless of whether Miyazaki mentioned this in the Famitsu interview or not. Has there been any other PC game in the past ten years with resolution locked in this way?

Ultimately, I wonder what was even the point of including various false resolution settings in the graphics options menu. After all, the game will always render a 1024x720 image, stretched to fit your 1080p monitor, for example. My understanding is that it looks the same regardless of whether you choose 1920x1080, 1600x900 or 1280x720. Was it simply to claim they were complying with GFWL, or perhaps the UI looks slightly better?

epithumia said:

I'm sorry, but unless they put "very poor port", "requires xbox gamepad" and such in their advertising materials, they don't get a pass just because they were up-front about it. If go to some retail site and look the game up, I don't see anything besides the usual superlatives. Requiring your customers to recall your official statements from months ago just doesn't work, and saying they have no right to complain because they didn't do their research is just foolish, assuming you actually want to continue having customers.

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Seriously? What information do we get on the back of a PC game's case these days? Or even movies? Who would buy a game based on just that and then complain because it turns out they did not like it? Read the reviews.

(I have a hard time finding out what genre a game is in from the backs of DVD cases these days. Can't they just put that on there as an indication of what it's like, even if it's not accurate? HUD-less screenshots and a story summary is all there is more often than not. Grrr, end rant.)

CountChocula said:

Ultimately, I wonder what was even the point of including various false resolution settings in the graphics options menu. After all, the game will always render a 1024x720 image, stretched to fit your 1080p monitor, for example. My understanding is that it looks the same regardless of whether you choose 1920x1080, 1600x900 or 1280x720. Was it simply to claim they were complying with GFWL, or perhaps the UI looks slightly better?

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It's probably the internal rendering resolution and they most likely used all kinds of shortcuts and optimizations on the console based on the assumption that it is 1024x720 stretched. (See: Halo 3.)