Players Furious Over Buggy GTA IV PC Release 384
Jupix writes "It took Rockstar most of a year to port Grand Theft Auto IV to the PC, and while they claim this was because they wanted polish and quality with their PC release, it appears the result has been less than satisfactory. Players all over the internet are furious over numerous bugs in the release, ranging from nonfunctional internet registration and graphics glitches to completely inoperative installations. One of the game's largest retailers, Steam, has reportedly gone so far as to start handing out refunds to hordes of unsatisfied (and no doubt uncomfortably noisy) customers."
Ha-ha! (Score:5, Informative)
Makes you wish you could have tried it first before buying it, huh? Oh wait, thanks to "copyright infringement" laws making YOU the criminal and DRM, you can't.
Enjoy being ripped off your $49.99. I guess eventually they'll get a patch out. But remember to support the industry! They obviously want your money more than you do.
I'm not (Score:4, Informative)
The Xbox version does not have SecuROM. But, while certainly a factor, that does not account for all of these issues. I'm guessing the rest is down to insufficient testing on a variety of configurations.
And let's not forget that Chrismas is around the corner. It wouldn't be the first time a release was rushed to make a holiday season.
Personally the game fell off my radar when they confirmed they'd use SecuROM. Hopefully they'll release a non-restricted version in the future. Not to mention a bug fixed one.
I would like to point out that this version of SecuROM has some FADE type functionality in it. That makes it even more difficult to separate bugs caused by the restrictions software gone haywire from the actual game code.
Deciding to never buy titles with SecuROM and similar draconian schemes was the best decision I ever made I think. It saved me from the mediocrity that was Spore, and now from this bugfest.
Re:Ha-ha! (Score:5, Informative)
People are getting their refund requests denied now. Presumably Valve were being nice to the first few, but shut the door when a lot of people started asking.
Re:Ha-ha! (Score:5, Informative)
If you charge back you risk Valve shutting down your Steam account, apparently. The joys of someone else controlling access to games you've bought I guess.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:4, Informative)
Bought this POS. (Score:5, Informative)
Despite my concerns over all the hoopla DRM I purchased this via Steam. Let's go over a few of the problems:
a) ~15 Gig. Really? Really. ... since I only boot into windows to play games like this it has basically rendered itself a total fucking disgrace. Valve better be refunding my money or they will lose an up-till-now loyal customer. I've been playing games for like 28 years (GIT AWF MY L4WN) and this is the most buggy piece of shit my eyes have seen since some of the Atari Jaguar games.
b) Needs new versions of at least 2, maybe 3 Microsoft programs to be installed before playing.
c) Installs some fucking crap ass community software that was never asked for or mentioned when making the initial purchase over steam. This shiet from Rockstar goes in the system tray and puts up a fricken splash screen at every reboot on your desktop just to play their game.
d) The inane pushing of the new Games for Windows stuff. Oh I have to create a local G4W profile even if I never plan on playing online?
e) During loading it displays a black screen for 3-4 minutes on my box with 4gig/7200rpm disk. It's a laptop so at least I can feel the disk spinning to make sure it is doing something.
f) The resolution change takes SO long I never get to confirm it before it switches back when I am actually in the game.
g) The first time I ran it with defaults, no textures loaded until about 30 seconds *after* the opening cinematic was done and my player was sitting in the car.
h) Running the benchmark twice within one session causes a crash on my machine.
i) It has already crashed multiple times.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Informative)
Huh... I guess I've just been very lucky so far. I've been playing GTA4 for two days now with no stability issues. I've got Vista64 installed with 4GB RAM. That's the gaming side of my PC (I do everything else in Debian), so I try to tune it towards better game performance... things like turning off services that I'll never need for games.
Now, the port does have some issues. I've got a fairly decent machine and, especially when compared with games like Crysis or Farcry 2, this engine clearly needs some optimization. Strangely, it seems CPU limited rather than GPU limited. After I quit the game, I can see on my CPU graph that both cores have been running at ~100%. I spent some time tweaking the video settings and right now I've got it running with both decent quality and a decent framerate.
One "feature" that seems to be annoying a lot of people is the video memory "calculator" the game uses. For each setting you modify, it calculates how much video memory that will cost. Your total is your installed video memory (512MB on my card). Not everything affects it, but increasing resolution, texture size, and draw distance will. So depending on how you set these you can't necessarily have them all high. But, it doesn't seem to work very well. You can override it from the command line. I forced it to use my LCD resolution (1280x1024) with high textures and a decent draw distance. This puts me at about 730/512MB on my "budget" yet the game still runs just fine and it looks better too.
They added a "dynamic shadow" feature to the PC version which you can adjust in the graphics menu. The values range from 0 to 16, but the quality at any setting is mediocre. It's a nice idea, but poorly implemented, and the game will run a bit faster when I turn it off.
Another annoying bit already mentioned is the control scheme. Fortunately, I purchased an XBox360 controller for use on my PC because that is the only gamepad supported by GTA4 (though I didn't know that when I bought the controller). Also, you can't actually *change* any of the mappings. There is a "Controller Configuration" menu item, but when you select it you are shown a picture of the controller and a diagram of what each button does. You can press R-stick left and right but all that does is show you the mappings for on foot, in vehicle, etc.
Like previous GTA ports, the PC version will let you play your own music on one of the radio stations (Independence FM here). They've even improved it for GTA4 and one of the modes will automatically insert fake commercials and DJ banter between your music if you like. But... it doesn't support Ogg (my preferred format) or many others. I do have some MP3s, though, and could always transcode if I wanted. The game specifically says that you can put shortcuts to your music or music folders into the user music directory. But... it doesn't work with networked mounts. I keep all of my music on my server and access via Samba from Windows or NFS in Linux. But not for GTA4... it just ignores any shortcuts that access another machine. Lame!
Still, despite these issues, it's been working far better for me than it has for most people and I've certainly been enjoying it so far.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Informative)
Assembly will only be used for small, high-cost operations. These pieces are small enough that if they malfunction, it's in a way that will be immediately visible.
Nonsense. Here's one counterexample. There is the assembly routine in Excel 2007 that formats numbers for display; it had a subtle bug with some input values. Bug description from Microsoft [msdn.com], Technical explanation (PDF) [lomont.org].
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:1, Informative)
I'm running GTA IV on Vista 64 with 8 GB Ram with no problems. The Games for Windows software needed to be downloaded and installed before GTA would continue installing.
The mechanisms for loging in and playing GTA is intrusive and annoying though.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Informative)
It's the DRM. Many of the crashing problems seem to be Securom crashing, which causes the game client to exit to desktop imediately.
Most of the problems are being caused by the dual online accounts required. The Rockstar Social Club servers initially couldn't handle the volume, which was causing the game to crash on startup. And people were having problems getting Games for Windows live installed right with its dependencies (such as .NET Framework 3.5). My guess is something isn't quite right with the GTA4 installer.
It also needs you to upgrade to the latest Games For Windows release, which doesn't support Vista64 at the moment. So that's all the hardcore gamers with 4GB+ of ram out of the picture.
False. I have Vista64 and 8GB of RAM and am able to run GTA4 and GfW just fine.
seriously, rockstar fucking knows better. (Score:4, Informative)
This is either a strategy or a colossal fail. Since there is G4W live shit and FailRom drm installed bundled, I'm leaning towards strategy.
I own every GTA game ever made. I opted for GTA IV on 360. I actually got a 360 for it. That being said, I'm a diehard PC gamer. I prefer PC for every game.
I could have waited, but when I heard GTA IV was a 'G4W live' only release, I knew rockstar had fucked up.
The others have all been flawless PC releases. They just know better.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:1, Informative)
I dont think he does, not even nearly.
But for example look at the playstation 2, look at its specification, then look at the specification required to run a PS2 emulator.
The architecture differs greatly, there is far greater parallelism, and its a beast to sort out. Whether or not the CPUs run the same instruction set is neither here nor there, when your dealing with dedicated console hardware your software isnt necessarily going to look anything like what your writing for a desktop machine, quadcore or otherwise.
Go back to your 2-2 degree and try again.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, this DRM is special. I think it could be responsible for the bugs people are seeing. Rockstar has gone out of their way to add in extra crap: dozens of little "easter eggs" like a spinning camera, missing textures, similar stuff, to copies that don't validate. It's more than a simple one time Securom check, there's at least a dozen different hooks that check to see if the version is legit.
This might be why the scene is having such trouble cracking the damned game. FeDOR may have finally cracked it, but it's taken more PROPERs than your average release.
Note/Disclaimer: I'm not going to pirate or buy this game, I'm nowhere near the minimum system requirements, and I don't generally pirate stuff anyway. I'm just following the scene releases so I can be the first one to laugh at Rockstar's "uncrackable, no really this time" DRM.
The worst part is... (Score:1, Informative)
that people LOOVVVVEEEE steam.
It's still a piece of shit system.
Steam is the ONLY reason counterstrike has ads. Since they can force updates down your throat whenever they like, it's far easier push out ads without having a portion of your players reject that particular patch.
Re:Bought this POS. (Score:5, Informative)
This really annoyed me as well - Startup Guard [mlin.net] caught it trying to register that community crap to run at startup. Denied it but it still keeps itself running after closing the game. I mean why? What chance is there that I want that crap running 24/7 on my PC? Reminds me of the last time I installed Real Player. Right click on the tray icon and you can uncheck "run at system start" so at least you can turn it off, but it is still out of order.
Not had any of the other problems you mention though - well except the 15GB (!!) download from Steam, I'd have bought a physical copy if I'd known it was that big.
Re:Bought this POS. (Score:5, Informative)
Your phone outperforms a PS2? (Score:4, Informative)
Just because your phone runs at a higher clock speed doesn't mean it's more powerful than a PS2. No phone, not even an N96 or an iPhone, is currently more powerful than a PS2, though no doubt they'll get there within a couple of years.
The PS2 is a weird system, I'd recommend reading this [arstechnica.com] technical overview of the Emotion Engine. There's also a link in there to another Ars article comparing the PS2 to PC style platforms.
I think that article shows why Sony thought the Cell was a good idea for the PS3. The PS2 gets most of its power from two vector units so having a PPC core linked with seven directly programmable vector units (one of the two VUs in the EE was linked into the geometry unit) probably seemed like a natural progression.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:2, Informative)
Where in either of these documents did it say that the routine was written in assembly? I believe you were confused by the PDF's use of a disassembler.
Page 11, under the diagrams:
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:2, Informative)
I hope everyone who's having problems returns it to the store. High levels of returns make the distributer very uneasy, which in turn should send a message to the publisher.
I see this suggestion sometimes, but every time I've ever tried to return an open pc game I've been told more or less to fuck off. What's you're secret?
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:4, Informative)
The QA never test the DRMed version (I know I have been a long time game programmer), they work on the non-DRM version !
Protection is added at the last moment, and expected to not break the game.
Also, they have been in a hurry to ship the game, so the QA were probably told to skip testing the DRM.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Informative)
You never played GTA3 for the PC, did you?
It had the same problems, and the only way to fix them was to get the no CD crack. It was so rampant that the only fix for Rockstar was to patch the game with a no CD crack of their own. What happens is that it's checking the CD so ridiculously often that your PC is now only as fast as your DVD drive. That's a HUGE bottleneck.
I mentioned this a few weeks ago. [slashdot.org] They haven't learned anything in the last five years.
Apparently, neither have the consumers.
Re:Ha-ha! (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. They have the balls to call the rightful, legal recovery of your money 'payment fraud'.
Re:Ha-ha! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Informative)
Therefore porting anything from the X360 to a general-purpose computer requires a major rewrite.
Here's what's wrong with your analysis:
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Informative)
Visa/Mastercard doesn't give a shit about a store's return policy. Buy with a credit card, and tell them you'll do a chargeback if they don't refund your money. You'll get your money back and the store will have to eat an additional chargeback fee.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Informative)
Normally, yes. However, in this case, because Steam launches the GTA "Social Club" launcher which in turn runs a command window which in turn actually runs GTA4, the options get lost somewhere along the way...
Maybe it will get fixed with a GTA or Steam patch, but right now the only way to pass options in is to create your own shortcut to LaunchGTAIV.exe and add them to that and then run it *after* you have already started the Rockstar Social Club app. It has a big play button, but just minimize it and use your shortcut instead.