How To Ruin Your Game's PC Port 244
An anonymous reader writes "An article at Ars goes through some of the biggest sins game publishers commit when porting a console game to the PC. At the top of the list, predictably, are annoying DRM and inconvenient game settings. From the article: 'PC gamers like to play with their mouse settings, adjust the amount of detail in the characters or environment, and change the audio mix between the music and the sound effects. We want to adjust the resolution, the aspect ratio, and even the field of view settings. The more options given to PC gamers, the better. While some engines support more options than others, there is a minimum amount of tweaking that should be available when we jump into the game. For an example of how badly PC gamers can get screwed on this issue, we can take a look at Bulletstorm when it was launched. Not only was mouse smoothing turned on as a default, but there was no way to turn it off. You had to find the configuration files, which were encrypted for some insane reason, and then install a third-party program to be able to turn off mouse smoothing and get the game feeling like it should on the PC."
All too many times... (Score:5, Interesting)
... have I (as a PC gamer) encountered crappy console conversions. Three examples off the top of my head:
Mirrors Edge: Yes, you could configure the controls, but in-game they were still referred to by their Xbox 360 identifiers. I.e. you could set jump to space, but in the tutorial it kept referring to non-existant buttons. Made the game virtually impossible to play since you'd get confused by the bad labeling.
Blur: Insane keyboard controls and completely unconfigurable. You had two keyboard layouts to choose from, both pre-defined and written in stone. Or you could use a 360-controller. Completely retarded. Various references all through the game telling you not to turn off your "console" while saving.
Assassins Creed: Completely un-intuitive console controls. Impossible to change.
Feel free to provide more examples.
Is 'cry me a river' too cliche for you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should 'software development craftsman' be exempt from the rules/expectations required of real world craftsmen?
You demand equal protections from the law, regulations, and business practices for your IP...or is IP something ephemeral and aether-like?
You insist on calling yourself 'engineers'.
Hmm. So I guess it's 'Hurray for me, and Fsck you!'
Make up your mind/s already.
[generalized warning...outliers expected]
I guarantee you that I can 'hack and crack' the physical world far more than anyone can do so in any game. MacGyver be damned, for a n00b and amateur.
Why not approach it from a 180 degree, player POV, instead of 'what will make next quarter profits'. It is not a binary choice....there is a middle ground.
It has been arguably documented that a strong 'mod community' helped promotion/sales*KaChing!$* for said game.
YMMV, but it seems to correlate with the perceived value of the game to the user/buyer to your game.. (hint:GIGO from POV)
Re:All too many times... (Score:4, Interesting)
MGS2 wins a special lifetime achievement award in the "bad port" category because you weren't actually using a keyboard, they had some kind of wierd controller-emulator that you mapped keys to buttons with outside of the game and that would grab your input and pretend you were using a controller. That's why you had to assign a key to "slow" and "gentle", so you could signal their controller-emulator-thing to pretend you were releasing a pressure sensitive button slowly or pressing it gently.