| 2 OCT 2008 at 7:27am |
Steve VSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 265
Joined: 16 MAR 2008
Status : Online | Originally Posted By SirDave (1 OCT 2008 1:39am)
To some extent I think the issue of bugs in adventure games comes down to whether the developers have an adequate budget to deliver relatively bug-free the type of AG they are creating. Though hardly an expert in the field, my guess is that 3rd person, dialogue-heavy, FMV games such as Law & Order Criminal Intent are going to cost more to develop and are more likely to both have more bugs & have more bugs that are going to require more extensive beta-testing to find.
On the other hand, the type of games from developer's such as Streko and Kheops and those from small indie houses (eg. The Lost Crown, Rhem) have a construct & design that is less expensive to develop & less likely to be bug-ridden.
In short, the companies that put out games such as Law & Order Criminal Intent are both over their head when it comes to the product they are putting out & are probably looking for the quick buck using name-value as a big come-on.
In 5 editions of the CSI series, there have been next to no bugs across all of the titles. The only one I can think of is in a multi pack edition of the first 3 games, where in Dark Motives, after you finish the first case the game inexplicably switches to French for the rest of the game! I wouldn't use the 'oh well, Telltale Studios had the resources to catch all the problems' argument to explain this..EA is the worlds biggest publisher but their games are reknowned for being riddled with bugs and for offering no customer support either.
Its a question of the amount of time and dedication that developers/publishers are prepared to put in to catching stuff rather than the actual numbers of people they have available..
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 10:13am |
CulturaJourneyman
Posts : 1337
Joined: 1 SEP 2004
Location: NL, Amersfoort
Status : Offline | But you know that a little patience, running a clean system, and doing your homework does eliminate 90% or more of all such problems.
I run a brandnew (less than two months old!) high end PC (quad core, 1gb ram, 9+ Nvidia), with almost four times any specs stated by the games industry.
The bugs don't seem to mind. They eat in my system at their leisure, not being hindered by proper coding, proper beta-testing, proper safeguards or proper programming by the gamestudio's.
The fact that so many here in this topic feel the need to rush to the defence of faulty gameproducers, really says it all. There should be no excuses.
Gamers seem to be happy to accept major and minor problems, so long as they get to play a game. The producers know this, and exploit this eagerness.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 10:38am |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By Cultura (2 OCT 2008 10:13am)
But you know that a little patience, running a clean system, and doing your homework does eliminate 90% or more of all such problems.
I run a brandnew (less than two months old!) high end PC (quad core, 1gb ram, 9+ Nvidia), with almost four times any specs stated by the games industry.
The bugs don't seem to mind. They eat in my system at their leisure, not being hindered by proper coding, proper beta-testing, proper safeguards or proper programming by the gamestudio's.
The fact that so many here in this topic feel the need to rush to the defence of faulty gameproducers, really says it all. There should be no excuses.
Gamers seem to be happy to accept major and minor problems, so long as they get to play a game. The producers know this, and exploit this eagerness.
I hate to break this to you, Cultura, but older games do not like multiprocessor CPU's. With a lot of older games and adventure games in particular, the hyperthreading process causes problems with these games.
So a too modern PC can also mess things up for you.
I too, have upgraded my rig in the last 2 months, and while I can now run a most beautifully smooth Mass Effect on highest settings, and a stunning Crysis, I still have the same old problems (that I had with my previous 2 core duo) with the older games. It's a question of that they were programmed for older specs, so in their case having higher specs than the recommended ones, can actually be a disadvantage.
There are some threads in the tech department that point you to solutions for playing older games and adventure games with a multicore processor.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 11:42am |
CulturaJourneyman
Posts : 1337
Joined: 1 SEP 2004
Location: NL, Amersfoort
Status : Offline | I know about the older games not running. That is not the problem.
I can do all sorts of magical things to get them running, from dos-mode to scummv, from compatiblity mode and patching, changing setup, copying savegames, changing startup mode and even restructuring the registry if need be. I do not hold any game producer responsible for a gamecrash in those cases. The game where simply not designed for contemporary PC's.
I do hold producers responsible when the games are recent and designed with XP or Vista in mind.
Those are the games I except to be bug free and running properly.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 12:36pm |
Jenny100Guild Master
Posts : 3510
Joined: 12 OCT 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Cultura (2 OCT 2008 11:42am)
I know about the older games not running. That is not the problem.
I can do all sorts of magical things to get them running, from dos-mode to scummv, from compatiblity mode and patching, changing setup, copying savegames, changing startup mode and even restructuring the registry if need be.
Now you got my curiosity up. Restructuring the registry is one "tweak" I never heard of before. What sort of restructuring did you do and what game(s) required this?
Gamers seem to be happy to accept major and minor problems, so long as they get to play a game. The producers know this, and exploit this eagerness.
Given a choice between a game with basic, unenhanced graphics and features that is as stable as Windows itself and a game with a lot of features and customizations and stunning graphics that may or may not have bugs on your system, which do you think most gamers would go for?
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 12:45pm |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By Cultura (2 OCT 2008 11:42am)
I know about the older games not running. That is not the problem.
I can do all sorts of magical things to get them running, from dos-mode to scummv, from compatiblity mode and patching, changing setup, copying savegames, changing startup mode and even restructuring the registry if need be. I do not hold any game producer responsible for a gamecrash in those cases. The game where simply not designed for contemporary PC's.
I do hold producers responsible when the games are recent and designed with XP or Vista in mind.
Those are the games I except to be bug free and running properly.
Ok, point taken.
Maybe we should have a public, user-made kind of a blacklist. It would be a forum/thread/list/website where gamers post bugs that they have found in modern games. Then we should find a way to have publishers notice the list, and hopefully they will not like it too much to have their games cited in the list.
I must be honest though, that bar the odd crash or two (which could honestly be caused by anything), I have not encountered bugs in games developed in the past 3 -4 years or so, bar the aforementioned Gothic 3 (an RPG), and here I'm talking about games from all genres. I can't help wondering which specific modern games you guys are referring to, that are so bug-ridden?
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 1:01pm |
CulturaJourneyman
Posts : 1337
Joined: 1 SEP 2004
Location: NL, Amersfoort
Status : Offline | I can't help wondering which specific modern games you guys are referring to, that are so bug-ridden?
Law and Order Criminal Intent
Around the World in 80 Days
Lord of the Rings
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Sims2
Battlefield Vietnam
Mass Effect
To name a few that are so bugged it hurts.
Longest Journey 2 had some annoying bugs too (in the cave section), Bioshock was bugged too, but in both cases they didn't hurt too much.
A blacklist is a rather fetching idea!
Given a choice between a game with basic, unenhanced graphics and features that is as stable as Windows itself and a game with a lot of features and customizations and stunning graphics that may or may not have bugs on your system, which do you think most gamers would go for?
You tell me... The latter?
But the point is, that some games are bug-ridden, and the producer probably knows this but takes the occasional complaint in their stride.
would not want updating to be automatic. Suppose the game is running fine and the update "breaks" the game on your particular computer while fixing a problem on another?
HalfLife2 Episode two (the game I'm currently playing, together with Lost Crown) has an automatic update system. While the system through the Valve website is arbitrary (it does not let you play your copy on any other computer than the one you installed it on) the game updates itself and (by consequence?) runs flawless. And in the case of HL2 we're talking about probably the most advanced games (graphically) games of today. Valve is probably one of the producers that take bugs seriously. I have never played a Valve game that had bugs. Any.
On the other hand, K2, Rockstar, Legacy Interactive, Fractional, Dice (Battlefield) and EA all produce games that have noticable bugs.
Sure, I think some leeway towards small or indy producers is due, but the major companies should know (and do) better.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 2:21pm |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By Cultura (2 OCT 2008 1:00pm)
I can't help wondering which specific modern games you guys are referring to, that are so bug-ridden?
Law and Order Criminal Intent
Around the World in 80 Days
Lord of the Rings
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Sims2
Battlefield Vietnam
Mass Effect
Hm, maybe it's bcause I don't really play shooters that I haven't really noticed bugs. I haven't had a chance to play Around the World in 80 days, but I've heard it has glitches. I don't play "The Sims" either.
Admittedly, I never got a chance to completely finish Mass Effect, bit I didn't notice any bugs except for infinite experience exploit loopholes, - and with beneficial little glitches like those, -personally, I would never complain about them (I love them ) - I mean, if you don't want to exploit the loophole, - then don't!
Incidentally, if you're running ME with only 1G RAM, I'll assume you run in XP still? (As most next-gen games these days tend to require 2 Gig for XP, and 3-4 Gigs RAM for Vista - (Minimum specs will say less, but then you can't run on high settings)?) - and that therefore it isn't Vista causing some of your mentioned problems.
My previous PC setup was up to ME's minimum settings, but I did experience a slight lag - and that was even then already with 2Gigs of RAM, a dual-core processor, and not too shabby Graphix chipset.
On my current system I haven't experienced any problems with it though.
Which specific LOTR, are you referring to, Cultura? As you know, there are quite a few of them floating around. There's quite a few RTS ones, and there's at least one RPG that I know of. (There could be others as well - I'm not that clued up). I have about 5 different LOTR games. But have not played them all yet).
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 2:32pm |
CulturaJourneyman
Posts : 1337
Joined: 1 SEP 2004
Location: NL, Amersfoort
Status : Offline | I'm running Vista, but can run XP as well if need be. And I have loads of GB's in both RAM and on the Nvidia..., this being a computer that was well over $1000. So technically, all the newer games should run fine, even in the highest settings (and most do, by the way, it is the rotten apples in basket I'm furious about!).
It is the online version of LOTR that has many bugs.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 3:00pm |
avatar_58Private Detective
Posts : 403
Joined: 27 MAY 2008
Status : Online | Originally Posted By TheTraveler (2 OCT 2008 10:38am)
I hate to break this to you, Cultura, but older games do not like multiprocessor CPU's. With a lot of older games and adventure games in particular, the hyperthreading process causes problems with these games.
So a too modern PC can also mess things up for you.
That can be fixed actually, you can set the affinity and only use one core. Imagecfg can permanently do this to a game's exe as well.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 4:43pm |
CrisGerSchattenjger
Posts : 2539
Joined: 28 APR 2007
Location: US
Status : Offline | I played Mass Effect including ALL the side quests and visited All the planets and never saw a single bug, and i poked and prodded very hard indeed.
Gothic III is a bit tricky, it did indeed have some problems, but if you stop loading the patches at the community patch 1.41 it is generally quite stable, adding 1.52 does deal with more problems but also is for some people not an improvement. Now that Spellbound is working on the Arcania expansion and supporting the game, things are better. The Genome Engine is remarkable and the game itself one of the great achievments of game develpment albiet bugged to a degree.
Gothic IV will learn from the process i am sure.
DreamFall has no bugs that i am aware of, the cave sequence is difficult bordering on too difficult due to some design problems and clipping that can occur, some of the puzzle sequences in DF are marginal...in that they are extreme. The central bio tank area is also problematic but from design not bugging i find.
LOTR is buggy i agree with, but it does not bother me as much as it might as the path the develpers took is so far from JRR's vision that I would never play that past testing for any gold in Moria but that is a personal thingy, as i am very fussy over classic stories that i love as much as the Lord of the Rings cycle. I keep hoping and keep looking at the titles as they appear. And again, as i say, i am very fussy about story, just me.
I find that overall, bugs are a necessary part of the development of complex and often very graphic intensive game advances....and the huge number of system and platform variables makes it quite a challenge for a developer to cover all the bases. Good beta work can ask for thousands of reports, and remember each change can cause other alterations throughout the code base.
Other questions of quality arise when a title is rushed to release, and that is another story. A intriguing topic to be sure.
As for playing older games, for a while I maintained a 'stable' of older platforms but found I can play anything on a decent modern PC with XP SP2 (NO VISTA ever ever ever ) using DosBox, VDMSound, ScummVM and patience. One risk with older game twidding is however, bad drivers, and so it is best to keep a good collection of driver fixes and adjsutments in mind or pool errors can happen.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 4:48pm |
CulturaJourneyman
Posts : 1337
Joined: 1 SEP 2004
Location: NL, Amersfoort
Status : Offline | I played Mass Effect including ALL the side quests and visited All the planets and never saw a single bug, and i poked and prodded very hard indeed.
Joking?
001. On Noveria, after the Benezia mission if you return and speak with the turian mechanic, Lilihierax, (standing in the tunnel just before the garage that takes you to peak 15), you can ask for repair services. The mechanic replies that it was what he was waiting for, and the screen dialog drops out abruptly.
002. On Eden Prime, if you replay the game a second time with a character greater than level 50, you can then level up all your comrades too. Corporal Jenkins, the man that gets killed in the very first mission, had 600 health with heavy armor augmented by shields IX and exoskeleton IX on this second game round. Despite this, he will still die after Geth fire hits him with the same two or three rounds.
003. On Feros, entering the decrypt door at the beginning of the ExoGeni base, you will find a powered down Geth Armature. Normally, when you loot the container inside the far end of the room, the Armature will suddenly power up and attack you. But sometimes, you'll find the Geth Armature already powered up (standing erect) but it will ignore you. It will be missing the red enemy target triangle as well and you cannot engage or kill it.
004. On Therum (the rescue Liara T'soni mission), at the point where you're supposed to disembark from the Mako and attack on foot (the narrowed rocks that prevent the Mako from entering), you can actually drive the Mako through if you're persistent enough. A combination of tilting and thrust jet maneuvers will let the Mako slip sideways between the opening and before you know it, you're past the defile and still in the Mako. The enemy infantry will attack you as usual, and you can engage them. However, when you get to the cut scene that shows the Geth Drop Ship disgorging Amatures, you'll notice that it will curiously show the Mako instead of Shepard's team on foot. This means that the cut scenes themselves were originally coded to allow for that possibility. However, once the cut scene ends the Geth mysteriously fail to see the Mako. You can engage and kill them without their returning fire. Also, while in the Mako, if you advance further and try to drive the Mako up the ramp of the dig site, the Mako (with you in it) will suddenly disappear. You cannot do anything else at that point except reload.
005. On the Normandy, if you go to your locker and walk to the right of it into the wall you will go halfway through and see into the next room and be stuck with no way to save or go back; very annoying.
006. On Feros, after getting rid of the Geth shield at ExoGeni, returning towards Zhu's Hope from the refugee hideout, in the under roadway compartment, the decrypt container (to the left of the crate) will be refilled with equipment.
007. On Feros, at the end of the mission, when you walk back to the Normandy, you'll notice that Greta Reynolds is continuing to stand guard, but this time with an invisible weapon.
008. When you recover items (on the screen that tells you what was recovered), you have to option to convert those items into omnigel. If you're already at 999 Omnigel, if you convert those new items into more omnigel, the little counter will indeed go beyond three digits, telling you that you now have a new tally of 1000 or more omnigels. But when you look at your equipment screen again, you'll revert back to the original 999 max total.
009. The manual states you should find safe and stable ground before you exit the Mako. However on numerous planets there will be a rock you can mine which does not come close to being on stable ground. This will result in a few save and reloads since you will more than likely get stuck.
010. On Noveria, arriving at the rift station (with the soldiers guarding the entrance of the Hot Labs just after where you get off of the Tram) a few Rachni will pop up from the ventilation shafts. If you or one of your biotic teammates use Singularity you can pull one of the Rachni into a wall, where it can no longer be killed. To get rid of it, you need to use the elevator and go down first; then come back up again. But the Captain leading the security team is not pleased since you didn't help him kill all the Rachni.
011. When driving in the Mako, if you detect ore nearby on your radar, and then have the radar jammed, even if you leave the jamming area or kill the source of the jamming, the ore will not reappear on your radar. If you exit the Mako and hop back in, the ore will then reappear.
012. If you are playing the game with a bonus talent, the talent may mysteriously disappear from the Power Wheel once you obtain enough other powers. To get around this problem, max the power before it is removed, so you will still be able to use it.
(list not complete!)
DreamFall has no bugs that i am aware of, the cave sequence is difficult bordering on too difficult due to some design problems and clipping that can occur,
clipping is flawless programming then?
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 5:50pm |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By avatar_58 (2 OCT 2008 3:00pm)
Originally Posted By TheTraveler (2 OCT 2008 10:38am)
I hate to break this to you, Cultura, but older games do not like multiprocessor CPU's. With a lot of older games and adventure games in particular, the hyperthreading process causes problems with these games.
So a too modern PC can also mess things up for you.
That can be fixed actually, you can set the affinity and only use one core. Imagecfg can permanently do this to a game's exe as well.
Yes, as I had mentioned, a few solutions have been discussed in the tech forum. Here's a link to a nice little write up: multicore solutions , and here is a link WinXpLauncher, to a nice utility for managing games which have problems with multicore processors.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 5:55pm |
avatar_58Private Detective
Posts : 403
Joined: 27 MAY 2008
Status : Online | Cultura those are minor. Game stopping bugs are the ones that you should be worried about. Inconsistencies and glitches are fine if they are just cosmetic (like the counters / invisible weapon things) and the Jenkins thing isn't even a bug - he *has* to die. Story related elements like that are an RPG cliche, not a bug. It doesn't matter how tough he is, he needs to die for the story.
I found Mass Effect to be relatively polished for a console port. Nothing big to make me annoyed at it. It maybe crashed once on me.
As for Vista I use x64 Ultimate and I've not had any major issues. Modern games work as they should and most classic games work right out of the box - if not VirtualPC and Dosbox are there to save the day.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 7:17pm |
Mr Innocent.Journeyman
Posts : 1317
Joined: 15 JAN 2008
Location: GR
Status : Offline | Sacred was an unbelievable mess with more bugs than pixels upon release (and yes, Traveler, a Potion of Wisdom than lasts 80 minutes instead of 80 seconds is still a bug, nor is there any way to know to avoid it until after you take the potion) that took over a dozen patches to make playable. I had forgot, and it's a good thing to remember now that Sacred 2 is about to hit the shelves. Pre-order canceled.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 7:19pm |
CulturaJourneyman
Posts : 1337
Joined: 1 SEP 2004
Location: NL, Amersfoort
Status : Offline | Well, I'm not trying to be difficult here. Just making a point.
I agree that glitches are not bugs. Crashing every 20 minutes (Law and Order Criminal Intent) or once every chapter (80 days) is beyond glitches.
And those companies should be dealt with accordingly.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 7:31pm |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By nik2008ofs (2 OCT 2008 7:17pm)
Sacred was an unbelievable mess with more bugs than pixels upon release (and yes, Traveler, a Potion of Wisdom than lasts 80 minutes instead of 80 seconds is still a bug, nor is there any way to know to avoid it until after you take the potion) that took over a dozen patches to make playable. I had forgot, and it's a good thing to remember now that Sacred 2 is about to hit the shelves. Pre-order canceled.
Yes, now that you mention it, Nik, - I do remember that the reason why I have two copies of Sacred is that I could not even get the original version working due to the idiotic copy protection. It was only the Gold (very patched) version that I got to work nicely.
Still, I'm buying into the hype with the sequel, and I'm not cancelling my pre-order (yet) (I have a day to go); but I will admit you have made me feel scared now.
I had actually forgotten about the original Sacred's bugginess.
I'll let you know how it goes with Sacred 2.... [smiley=scared.gif]
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 7:44pm |
Mr Innocent.Journeyman
Posts : 1317
Joined: 15 JAN 2008
Location: GR
Status : Offline | I know you are excited about Sacred 2, Traveler, more so than I, and I really hope that it is a great and bug free game that we can all enjoy.
But now that I recall what a mess the initial version of Sacred was, I've decided to let braver souls be guinea pigs for Ascaron. I find it very interesting that there is no question regarding the first Sacred's bugginess in the various pre-release Sacred 2 interviews, nor any assurance from the publisher that this will not be the case this time.
If Sacred 2 proves to be "relatively bug free" upon release, I'll preorder Sacred 3 when the time comes...
I 'm also deeply disappointed by the "Save and Exit" feature, but that's another story.
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| 2 OCT 2008 at 8:51pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 6693
Joined: 16 OCT 2004
Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
Fallout and Fallout 2 were buggy messes upon their intitial release too. But Interplay did fix the vast majority of the problems in the final Win 95 patches, which also addressed numerous gameplay / balance issues.
It's also interesting to note that these titles are among the handful of complex, older PC titles that install and run very well on Win 95, XP and now Vista with only one minor user tweak needed - to set the .exe properties to run in a 640 x 480 screen resolution.
Most importantly though, the Fallout series is one of the most popular, most highly acclaimed in any PC genre in any era. So yes, the original versions were quite buggy and the developers missed a huge number of other problems. But in the end, they produced one of the true classics of interactive gaming with amazing replay value and IMO as much fun than the law should allow.
Cheers, Terry
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| 3 OCT 2008 at 11:33am |
Mr Innocent.Journeyman
Posts : 1317
Joined: 15 JAN 2008
Location: GR
Status : Offline | The final official Fallout 2 patch still leaves eight hundred (800) bugs unfixed, a lot of them quite serious. You have to install Killaps unofficial patch to play Fallout 2 the way it was meant to be experienced.
The same goes for Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil,Vampire Bloodlines (in other words, all of Troika's games), Anachronox, Ultima IX, Gothic 3, Sacred, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (the last two were eventually fixed with a number of official patches. In both cases it was more than a year after initial release before the games were "relatively bug free" to name but a few otherwise truly excellent games that were released half finished.
You and I may be willing to wait five to ten years for a fan made patch/mod to make the game playable, Terry, but those that aren't willing to do so have a legitimate complaint and should have the legal right to get a refund for a product that doesn't work as promised. I really can't see how anyone can argue against that.
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