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."
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine the differences in modern pc architecture and the modern xbox actually make porting a game quite difficult if it is not written on a common platform that runs on all systems
Such as C++?
Here's a quick-and-dirty proof: debian has tons of stuff written in C++, and it runs on $BIGNUM architectures. I don't write fetch_to_L1_cache() or kill_instruction_pipeline() calls in my code.
Sure, you can add inline assembly, but you can also ifdef it out and write replacement C++ on incompatible archs.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the DRM.
Is that what they call Christmas now?
It's not DRM, it's the "we have to get this out the door before Christmas z0mg Xmas sales!!!11" mentality from the short sighted marketing department. Ship now and patch later is typical for this time of year. It probably does not bode well for the franchise, however.
Yeah, the DRM probably broke the game, but QA HAS to have seen this problem before shipping. Obviously $50 a copy was more important than the trivial fact of the game actually working or not.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Interesting)
And so what? Did you think Microsoft wrote DirectX for note taking?
I wouldn't know - boycotting (Score:5, Interesting)
I was really looking forward to buying GTA4 for the PC. I am the proud owner of GTA3, GTA:VC, and GTA:SA. But I can't buy GTA4, and this was so deeply dissapointing I actually sent Rockstar/Take2 a physical paper letter (which I am sure they will laugh at, ball up, and throw in the trash).
The problem? Mandatory online activation enforced by SecuROM. It isn't so much the latter I object to (though I DO object to it) as the former. I sometimes actually go back and install a game 5, 10, or even more years later and replay it if it was any good. What happens 10 years from now when the machine I am required to connect to no longer exists? Sure, I'm sure I can download a crack, or a patch, or something by then, but I want to own a fully working game right out of the box, not crippleware.
I know that the same applies to MMORPGs as well, but guess what? I have never, and never will, buy one of those, either.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Interesting)
How is anything based on Win32 and DirectX not a Windows derivative?
Those are APIs. Windows is an OS. Two completely different operating systems could use the same APIs, but handle the API calls completely different behind the scenes. That's kind of the point of an API.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not so sure. One of the more interesting 'success stories', if you can call it that, is the DRM in Cubase [wikipedia.org]. Cubase used to be massively pirated but version SX 3.1 released in 2005 took 9 months to crack and version 4 hasn't been cracked after 2 years.
They achieved this by wiring many types and layers of protection into as many diverse areas of the code base as they could. They made the job of reverse engineering just too frustrating and time consuming. You would effectively have to QA test the entire thing for various use cases and time delays. This obviously has knock on effects in performance for your paying customers of course.
Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see why you draw a comparison to MMOs. It's not in the same ballpark.
It is understood that no MMO will keep running forever. Those servers aren't an activation scheme. They are *the game*.
It is not understood that a single player game will refuse to run in ten years time (assuming you have the antiquated hardware and OS to run it still).
Anyways, I totally agree. I never buy an application anymore without first contacting the developers and asking them whether it has any kind of online activation scheme. It helps me avoid the trap, and it serves the dual purpose of informing them it cost them a sale.
Re:Bought this POS. (Score:5, Interesting)
They should've added it as an optional feature instead of making it a requirement to use. My first experience with it was in Fallout 3. At first it was nifty, but after coming across all of the problems mentioned above, I'm not so sure it's worth the hassle.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Interesting)
What you did not mention was, that the cracked (actually decrypted/compiled are better words for it) version ran much faster.
What they did was crazy. They decrypted the whole GUI code and only encrypted it right before use. Even the mouse was sluggish in the "original" version.
After cracking it, it ran nice and smooth.
This is easy to crack as soon as you know how to call the decryption for every piece of code needed. You have to follow the calls down, until you have a decrypted version of everything.
It's so stupid that it hurts: The CPU has to execute it in a un-encrypted form. So it has to lie in ram in that form some time in the execution. So you will always be able to get the raw machine code. But tell that to a PHB who can't tell the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents... *sigh*
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:2, Interesting)
>>>One would think that the Xbox 360 port should come right over...
That would be true if we were talking about an Xbox, which was a Celeron-based PC minus the keyboard, but not so with the X360 which has dedicated CPUs (multicore) and GPUs specifically assigned for the task of gaming. Therefore porting anything from the X360 to a general-purpose computer requires a major rewrite.
Re:Yes, Rockstar. (Score:1, Interesting)
I disagree with your standards, but there's already been a GTA killer out for months which is actually way more fun than GTA itself, and it's called Saints Row 2. The graphics are inferior, the storyline is juvenile and the deathmatch multiplayer isn't quite as deep as GTA's. On the other hand, the single player game itself is REALLY fun with tons of side missions to do, the character customization system is really really deep, and the game supports full co-op to the point where you can join and quit your friends' game seamlessly.
This review sums it up perfectly [escapistmagazine.com]. Please note that I'm no ZP shill, and I figured out how awesome Saints Row 2 was long before this review came out. Also, there's a PC port coming which will hopefully be a lot nicer than GTA4's port.
Re:Ha-ha! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think otherwise you don't grasp the DRM in Steam very well.
I think I just did. The solution is to create a new steam account for every game. If you have to chargeback one, you'll still have the others.
Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting (Score:3, Interesting)
I was really looking forward to buying GTA4 for the PC. I am the proud owner of GTA3, GTA:VC, and GTA:SA. But I can't buy GTA4, and this was so deeply dissapointing I actually sent Rockstar/Take2 a physical paper letter (which I am sure they will laugh at, ball up, and throw in the trash).
Take it from someone who's actually played GTA4 (on the PS3) - you aren't missing much. Gotta say, this version isn't as interesting or exciting as the GTA3 or GTA:SA.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Interesting)
It ended up biting Steinberg in the ass, because the crack was no simple EXE patch, it was a full-blown dongle emulator. By making Cubase SX3 hard to crack, they directly encouraged H2O to write a universal crack for all their dongle-infected apps.
To make things worse, the protection was so invasive, many layers of just-in-time decryption, that it significantly slowed down the app and led to all sorts of weird timing issues. As a result, a staggering number of people stayed on the previous version, which was quite similar in features.
The same nonsense is happening with Cubase 4. They've added a handful of crap features few people care about, so all those in the know are sticking with their existing version. You obviously can't go out and buy an older version in-store, so new folks wind up with C4 simply because they don't have a choice.
In this situation, one has to wonder how much money they've lost due to the DRM. It has taken a lackluster upgrade and made it worse, so a bunch of people are jumping ship to a competitor's product, such as Ableton, Sonar or the extremely popular Reaper. They all do pretty much the same things, support the same plugins (or more), and often provide more efficient interfaces (Cubase is kind of backwards for some things). How long until Cubase gets pwned by its own copy protection ?
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree. I'm sure GTA4 is totally worth playing, but having to deal with SecuROM, Games for Windows Live, and Rockstar Social Club is a hell of a lot of baggage.
I argue that pirating the game states very clearly that the product has value but the terms are unacceptable. I think the last thing any gamer wants is to discourage Rockstar from making more GTA games!
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sorry... What?
You're saying "Games for Windows", the Microsoft initiative to brand PC gaming as something akin to the consoles... Doesn't work on a version of their own operating system?
That's awesome. Nice one, Microsoft! Nice to see you're so firmly committed to this you're ensuring compatibility across the board.
Thanks for that info. That shows what a farce this "Games for Windows" nonsense is.
And you're absolutely right about Securom being behind the issues. What's hilarious is Rockstar just a couple of weeks ago claimed that the protection for GTA IV was going to be LESS harsh than the one used in Spore.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:3, Interesting)
A registry tweak will fix this:
First, move anything out of the "My Music" folder on the local machine. If you don't have one, just create an empty folder under "My Documents" and name it "My Music"
Open regedit and browse to:
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal
Edit the key named "My Music"
Change the value to "\\yourservername\pathtoyourmusic"
If this key doesn't exist, then create it.
Log out, log back in.
Add a shortcut to your "My Music" folder in the GTA music folder.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:4, Interesting)
The best experience ever, relating R*, was when a friend bought GTA San Andreas.
It did not run. And there was no patch. Even days after the release.
I took a quick look on gamecopyworld, and there were already patches avaliable for at least five different bugs!
The crackers fixed the bugs for R*, before they even could react
There were four points where the game could die. Before the intro, after the into, in the menu and while loading the city.
The fifth bug was that polygon points could be randomized all over the place for nVidia graphics cards. It looked horrible.
After that, he never bought something from R* again. I just pulled it straight from a Torrent tracker.
Unfortunately, R* does not seem to learn from this. I bet they will still make others responsible when they don't exist anymore. :D
And I hope I can buy the game designers and developers out for my company by then, for they are truly rock stars.
Re:I'm slightly astonished (Score:4, Interesting)
Sources inside Microsoft said again and again that both Xboxes in fact did run ports of Windows. You can find numerous [windowsfordevices.com] supporting [answers.com] sources [caustik.com] (who outside Microsoft would know better than people writing an Xbox emulator?) for this claim. Sorry, but I simply do not believe your reference.
It is even less likely that Microsoft wrote the operating system for the 360 from scratch. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, odds are it evolved from a duck - though it is not certain, it is the way to bet. Windows 2000 ran on the PowerPC until SP3 and was designed for portability - at least, it was redesigned for portability when they ported from the N-Ten to the x86. This is why they were able to port it to both DEC Alpha and IBM PowerPC in such a relatively short time. The Alpha port was the more commercially successful of the two since the Alpha was the more capable processor, and you could pay just as much for a PPC machine that would run NT with zero benefit, but the PPC port was probably the more capable of the two in another way - since it ran on standards-based PowerPC systems, it would run on a broader range of hardware including systems from IBM and Motorola.
PowerPC support alone is not sufficient reason for my prejudice, however; that lies in Windows NT's multiprocessor support. Anyone who has followed operating system history to any significant degree knows that multiprocessing has always been one of the most complex features to support. SMP has certainly been one of the most contentious issues in *BSD-land for just this reason. The idea that Microsoft just tossed off a new operating system with multiprocessor support which provides the Win32 APIs and is stable enough for a games console is not an impossible one, but it does seem highly unlikely to be true given Microsoft's track record, which is poor to say the least.
In summary, though Windows NT tends to have a lower penalty for thread creation than Unix and thus has some inherent advantages when it comes to multiprocessing and therefore even indicates that some people who work for or who have worked for Microsoft have some idea of what they are doing, I would not expect Microsoft to be capable of writing any operating system capable of providing a sizable portion of the Win32 (even though it is much less capable than Windows 2000, either operating system is a significant piece of software) from scratch at this point. If they were capable of doing this, they would certainly already have done so in order to replace Windows NT, which is long past the "showing its age" phase. Vista in particular is a mishmash of just about every computing model Microsoft has ever used. By far, the most logical explanation is that the Xbox operating system is based on Windows 2000, and so is the Xbox 360 operating system, but Microsoft's gaming business model is dependent on convincing people that they are not being sold a PC, and so they must deny any similarity unto their graves.
Put another way, YHBT by Microsoft.
Re:I wouldn't know - boycotting (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate to beat the dead horse of debate, but this really is just one more nail in the coffin of PC gaming.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but self-important console fanboys have been talking about the death of PC gaming as long as there have been consoles. I have news for you buddy: a bad PC game is just a bad PC game, just as a bad console game is a bad console game.
Re:Incompetence?, or passive-agressive attack? (Score:3, Interesting)
They are computers, special purpose ones, though these days they can also do more general purpose things. I have Linux on my PS3, for example.
But you don't HAVE to use those, but you can if you want (and if the developer gives you the option). Personally, I like mouse aiming in a PC to Console FPS port, but I can't stand WASD. So If I can, I use the mouse to aim, but the dual shock to move. It sounds awkward but works very well for me.
You also have to remember that there's more game genre's than FPS. and in most cases a dual analog joystick works adequately for those genres (and works "okay" in FPS's)
Let's take one of my favorite PC to console ports, the PS1 version of Diablo. It's a pre dual shock game, You can enable "Advanced" combo button controls, in that case holding R2 and hitting the "shape" buttons and the other shoulder buttons does different things, let me double check my manual so I get em right:
D-Pad = movement
Select = In game menu
Start = Pause
X = Attack
Square = Activate item/pick up item
Triangle = Cast active spell
Circle = use selected belt item
L1 = Quick Health
R1 = Quick Mana
L2 = Speed Spellbook
R2 = Combo button
R2 + Square = Inventory
R2 + X = Character info
R2 + Triangle = Toggle spell between the two enabled spells
R2 + R1 = Quest Log
R2 + L1 = Full Spell book
R2 + L2 = View Automap
Those controls are VERY fast to use, the game plays much much faster in the PS1 version than the PC version. The controls are also very comfortable for longer periods of time compared to the PC version which is VERY tough on the wrist and fingers. In other words, Diablo makes a better console game (for single player at least) than a PC game. It's all about the overall experience