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No Patch for Dead Rising Fans

Posted by Zonk on Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:58 AM
from the patch-it-so-that-its-fun dept.
XBox (Games)
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."
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  • Write your own patch. You can also improve the gameplay. Make new levels/mods, etc. Wouldn't it be nice if we had tools that could make this easier?
    • ... and then get the ever living crap sued out of you.
      • Yes, because you'll be taking money away from them by encouraging people to play their game. Oh wait.

          • lawyers and exec types see one thing and one thing only, the bottom line, and if there's no money to be gained by suing you, they don't.
            • No, that is not correct. They will sue you just because they can. Why? If they let you associate yourself with their brand (aka I'm going to make a Dead Rising patch!) and when you release the patch it fucks up your 360 or PC their name will be tarnished. Stupid, I know, but it has happened in the past. Also remember this: make all the noise on the internet you want about it, very few people will even know about it until they try to play the game on their standard def TV. Only 5-10% of your market actually
    • Only problem is that the game is for the XBOX 360 and you cant use new data/code for an XBOX 360 game at this time.
    • Wouldn't it be nice if we had tools that could make this easier?

      Wouldn't it be nice if they had tested the game on standard TVs and realized that the text was substandard and actually fixed the issue? I think patches for -any- console game are absolutely unacceptable. I've noticed a lot of ugly text in a lot of games lately myself, almost unreadable, but then it could just be the widescreen TV, widescreen setting for the xbox/ps2 or whatever... But it makes it real inconvenient when you're trying to earn
      • Of course that would have been nice. It'd also be nice if companies were held responsible for their products, but hey, I can't do anything about that, can I?

  • Quick! Someone get an internet petition going! (Score:4, Funny)

    by bunions (970377) on Tuesday September 12 2006, @12:02PM (#16089545)
    In these our modern times, when people need to get something done, they resort to the big guns: internet petitions.

  • No real point in doing it... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bones3D_mac (324952) on Tuesday September 12 2006, @12:03PM (#16089551)
    ... 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.
    • Good grief! After all, the graphics aren't vital to the gameplay. Nor is the sound. But they are bloody well vital to the experience of the game. After all, just finishing the game isn't the point; enjoing it is.

      I mean, hell, the words aren't vital to finishing a book. But what's the point of reading without them?

  • Long story short.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Living Fractal (162153) <execyte@noSPaM.execyte.com> on Tuesday September 12 2006, @12:05PM (#16089573) Homepage
    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
    • The problem is probably in testing the patch. It's not just a question of making the text bigger, you then have to check that it all fits on screen through the entire game. Sure, in an ideal world they would have make their system clever enough to cope with that...
      • There's this clever thing called scrolling. Maybe they should look into it.

        And while I'm not a fan of the JRPG tradition of condensing dialogue down to "Magic doohickey lies east. Talk to Jiro. Good luck!" I can't figure out how a game about killing zombie hordes needs such a volume of Dostoevskian textual exposition that it won't even fit on a screen.

      • It's not just a question of making the text bigger, you then have to check that it all fits on screen through the entire game.

        That's generally why you have multi-page notes. If the Final Fantasy series can handle it, why can't Dead Rising?

        In the rare event that multi-pages would break something, it's trivial to create a magnifying glass - even Microsoft made one with the stock install of WXP. You just need an easy-to-remember command for the users (e.g. holding down L+Z and playing with the analogue stick)

    • In a nutshell... (Score:5, Informative)

      by MMaestro (585010) on Tuesday September 12 2006, @12:27PM (#16089824)
      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.

      • 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.

        They don't? Most of the games I've played lately have textboxes or similar in them and use them to display text. They cause text to wrap.

          • I'm not saying that they used a text control that wraps text. I am saying that functionality is probably present on the Xbox360 and if they made a graphic instead then they made it hard for themselves, it's no one else's fault. I know that I have seen that functionality utilized on PC games, because I've looked in data files for some games, seen text without line breaks or other control characters, and seen it word-wrapped in games.
      • That was true a decade ago. Nowdays processors have more power, the power needed to wordwrap is trivial. Anyone not writing a wrap function and counting on precise lengths by the content producer is not only being stupid, its likely going to cost more (it'll lead to at least a dozen bugs, I promise). The space problem is more likely to be the bottom end of the screen- not word wrap, but screen wrap. A scroll mechanism could easily be implemented, but it apparently wasn't. Very short sighted.

    • Like maybe storing every dialog box as a separate JPEG...

      I was going to say separate bitmaps...

      I know, maybe each character in the font was a TIF! But then you'd think that with that kind of resolution, it would make the issue moot; just scale the font size up. Maybe not. Maybe they should have used SVG images.

      Or maybe, as you figured, they're full of BS.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by badboy_tw2002 (524611)
      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 th

  • Dead Rising 2: The Reading of the Dead (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hahnsoo (976162) on Tuesday September 12 2006, @12:06PM (#16089585)
    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.
    • Actually, That might work better than you think. Typing of the Dead. [gamezone.com] Took House of the Dead 2, put it on the dreamcast and had you type for your life! Reading of the Dead: and Edutainment game. Edutainment...now there's a real zombie.
  • Capcom don't want to make a patch to fix this. They wan't you to fix it by buying a HD TV. In this way, they can make even more de facto "HD-only" games, and hence justify higher game cost by claiming; "Most 360 gamers have/want " HD!!! (TM)", and it is more expensive for them to make HD games for whatever reason.

  • Reminds me of a bug in... (Score:3, Informative)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) (613870) on Tuesday September 12 2006, @12:18PM (#16089736) Journal
    ...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.

  • Biggest insult of the whole thing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cowwie (85496) on Tuesday September 12 2006, @12:37PM (#16089913)
    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 [capcom.com]

  • A brain dead design... (Score:3, Funny)

    by creimer (824291) on Tuesday September 12 2006, @01:50PM (#16090526) Homepage
    '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.
  • Why not take it back to the shop and get a refund or something else instead and in that way tell Capcom to shove their shitty attitude? Surely it's not the only megagame on the 360?
  • Not sure if similar laws exist everywhere, but in the UK the Sale of Goods Act should cover this.
    If the product is "not fit for its intended purpose" the store has to refund you. (Not the publisher, the store you bought it from)

    I suppose "fit for its intended purpose" may be a bit vague in this case; I've played Dead Rising on a non-HD projector (6ft high image) and haven't had any problems reading the text. I wish they'd recorded dialogue for the characters in the game you rescue/interact with though, it's
  • For the love of god, please get them to fix that.
  • If you feel strongly about this, don't bother mailing capcom, don't bother writing here and don't bother signing internet petitions.

    If you really want to hurt Capcom, hit up all of the retailer sites that allow you to post reviews on the products for sale. Write a polite review stating that you like / dislike the game and explain the issue with SDTV and that capcom wont fix it. Rate the game as appropriate to your feelings. Save your review somewhere and simply copy / paste it into every store you can fi
    • Uh? I'd say the issue's with Capcom here, but we'll see how the PS3 will fare since it's an issue of an HD game on an SD screen.
    • At least we can demand and get patches.

      I bought Dead Rising for the 360 and its text is utterly unreadable.

      This definitely calls for a letter writing campaign. This'll be the first AND last Capcom game my wife and I buy, and we will let them know that.

      Unfortunately this is capitalist America and in this economy, corporations never listen to their customers anymore.

        • I think that is a bit unfair. Capcom has been making games for a very long time, and aside from their tendency to produce sequel after sequel until a franchise runs dry (then modify it slightly, rinse, repeat), they've produced quite a few excellent games. Street Fighter, Megaman, and the Resident Evil series (especially 4) come to mind.

          Now, if they repeatedly continue to ignore customers and release subsequent games in the same fashion, then it's time to boycott. They made a mistake, and they certainly kno

            • I stand by my claim that what is happening with Dead Rising is a taste of more egregious things to come. I'd rather deal with multiple players releasing different patches that make a broken game workable, than no hope for any patch.

              I can't get a refund on this game.
              I'm flat out stuck with it.
              Capcom doesn't care if an unhappy customer asks them for a refund.
              Capcom doesn't have to care.

              Anyone who bought Dead Rising for a standard def TV is screwed.

              How else are we gonna fix that situation? "Bend over and take
        • They could fix the mistake, as a last resort, by giving refunds. That should have been their first instinct, upon realizing the game was unpatchable.

          They did not. Even if they change their minds later, it will be as a result of public pressure, not from any consideration for their customers.

          If you do not write them off, I'm afraid that you are a slavish dupe.
    • That was sort of my first thought about it as well. But more then being an unacceptable bug it defiantly shows the focus of the xbox360 platform and their developers.

      For this but to make its way through QA and not be caught, or more likely get caught by QA and deemed a shippable bug by the production, it means that there is very little value put on the market of gamers that do not have a HD television. It shows a dedication to supporting the hardcore gamer market (the people who will actually buy a $1000

    • *HD TV owners put their hands up*

      Yup, all less-than-10%-of-them-US-TV-owners (US HDTV market penetration is estimated to barely reach 10% by the end of 2006) (and much less everywhere else)...

        • Don't you think gamers might be more likely to fall into a category which has a higher percentage of HD TV's in their household?

          Right on, I don't.

    • Simple. Even in SD, the 360's superior graphics capabilities can be seen quite clearly. Aside from that, the 360's ability to handle insanely high polygon counts combined with complicated manipulation of thousands of onscreen objects simultaneously without skipping a beat makes a very noticeable difference in the gaming experience.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AuMatar (183847)
      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 i
        • Because if you're getting a 21-25" TV, YOU DON"T NEED HD. Let me say it again, YOU DON"T NEED HD. Are you clear on this? Now let me explain why:

          How are you going to use this TV? Are you going to be sitting with your eyes closer than 1.5 meters from the screen? Then odds are, you won't really be able to tell the difference between EDTV (which is progressive DVD resolution, 480p) and high-def at 720p or 1080i/p unless you have very good vision, in which case you have a whole other set of problems

          • I have a 27" 4:3 HDTV CRT -- equivalent to about a 25" 16:9 in widescreen mode. I typically sit about 6' away, and I'll be damned if there isn't a marked difference between 480i and 1080i content from that vantage point (Conan O'Brien's face is much more frightening in HD).

            I'll concede that there is a lower limit below which it doesn't make any sense to have a HD display; no one needs to have 300 pixels per inch on their cell phone's LCD screen. But at screen sizes of 21" to 25" diagonal, I believe that H
            • Here's an experiment I'd like you to try: test watching a 480i source, a 480p source, and a 1080i source, all on your display, at your normal seating distance.

              Here's the results you'll get, 480i->480p is a BIG jump, and very noticible. That's what progressive DVD players output, and its pretty darned nice (which is why most people find a good DVD transfer quite acceptable for their movie needs). 480p->1080i? not so much. Especially at that distance, the angular resolution of the average pers

        • I was going through the local SuperWalmart a few weeks ago, and noted at least two CRT-based HD televisions. They were both in the 26-inch range, if I recall, and both were around $500. Froogle [google.com] lists several, including the Toshiba 26HF66 [toshiba.com], Samsung TXP2675WHX/XAA [samsung.com] and the Sansui HDTV2600 (A rebadged Orion, apparently, and I can't find a link for it).
      • Funny thing about computer monitors, they can't really understand the difference between "text" and "graphics" either. Fortunately that sort of thing isn't handled by the monitor. The software should've been designed so that some kind of "text-display" function would be used, separating the text from the code required to display it. That way, wrapping functions could be added & changed as-necessary to accomodate different displays. Hard-coding line-wraps and other such things is just silly.

        The game
      • If Capcom made this screw-up on a console where HD wasn't even an option, what excuse would they use then? "Uh, we optimized this game for a resolution that is impossible to attain". I highly doubt they would have shipped the product with a mistake like that if the game were for, say, the GC.

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