Mike Capps On Unreal Engine 4

[Grobut]

There is a difference between not liking something and just trying to fake yourself into believing that it doesn't exist.

I don't "fake myself" into beliving anything, i just don't buy most console ports because i don't enjoy them, why buy something you don't like?

Speaking in broad terms, games made for Consoles do tend to play a certain way, they are targeted at a certain audience, they are usually geared twords a more casual "drop disk in, arse on couch, play for a couple of houers" mindset, and i find most of them quite dull to be honest, that beeing the reason i do not own a Console, their only selling point is their games, but there just aren't enough of them i would enjoy to pay the premium.

And i enjoy them even less played on the PC, because they where playtested and balanced for the Consoles, so when you go at it with the better control of a mouse and keyboard, they tend to be very easy to beat, and it gets even more dull.

I'd rather have games like Assassin's Creed actually come to PC with a pretty terrible UI than not have games coming to PC at all. Recent comments by many people would tend to make you believe that PC gaming is going to disappear soon.

You could just as well have played it on a Console, infact you probably should have, since that is what it was designed, tested and balanced for, it would have been a better gaming experiance for you.
That's my big beef with the whole thing, if they don't bother to port the games propperly, change them to have a PC freindly UI, controls, and rebalance the gameplay for a mouse, then you are playing sloppy seconds, you are getting a degraded gaming experiance even compared to the Console version (and definately compared to a PC exclusive title).

But that is not the worst part, not by a long shot, now that they have figured out people will buy this junk, they are not going to make any PC exclusives any more, why would they? you will buy it, so they will continue to make Console games and give us token PC ports of them.

Go ahead, take a good look at UBI softs lineup og games since around 2005 and into the future, their next releases, how much PC do you see in that? multi-platform, multi-platform, and yet more multi-platform.. naturally the same can be said of just about any other big publisher or developer thease days.

See, that is where we differ you and i, i would rather have fewer games, if it just ment i got better made for PC ones, its a tradeoff, sure, its not ideal certainly, but i'd rather have it that way to be honest.

I don't like having games brought to PC that don't feel tailored to the PC, but I'd rather have a neutered experience on the Pc than no experience at all. This isn't a case of just "settling". The amount of games coming for the PC that are at all interesting had dropped into depressing numbers between 2003-2007, and I, for one, am glad to see developers/publishers starting to give it a second look now, regardless of the quality of the "port". FFS, it can't be WORSE than it was on the consoles (in general, I know some are .

And just about all of thease games you could have enjoyed even more on a Console, the system they where tailored for.

I don't think, not even for a second, that PC gameing is ever going to die, even if all multi-platform titles made today and from now on suddenly decided "we will nolonger port to the PC ever again", somebody would pick up the slack, for all the talk of the Console market beeing bigger, the PC market is still so big that nobody would considder letting it go untapped.

The PC market never went anywhere, it's the developers that went away, they went to the Consoles and started making their games multi-platform, and THAT is the only thing that really can kill PC gaming, if nobody makes games for it, because they are all making them for the Consoles and just giving us token ports.. why would any sane person continue to upgrade their gaming rig, costing what it does, if all they have to play are Console games? it'd be insanity, you'd be much better off buying a much cheaper Console.

 

[KeithZG]

I'm still interested in hearing about what people think this means to PC gaming. So far most posts seem to be about how this makes they feel, etc. What I'd like to hear is specifics about how they think this will negatively impact them.

Well, I think examples speak loudly. Mike Capps also brought up the Deus Ex games recently, and that was a game that due to a primary focus on the console release for the second game was severely limited in many ways (map size, UI, depth of the RPG elements and the abilities of choices to make actual differences in the plot, etc etc).

Add to that the existence of a map editor for the original and the complete lack thereof for the sequel. To this day I still find new single player scenarios to play, and I often play multiplayer with my friends because, although the multiplayer that was released was somewhat odd and broken, the always-amazing UnrealEd combined with the complexity of the interactions and objects which the game provides allows one to create multiplayer experiences which have yet to be equalled. That one can, in the space of maybe 10 minutes, transform a single-player Deus Ex level into an intricate and enjoyable LAN experience (which I have, in fact, done at one or two LAN parties; CounterStrike just couldn't compete) speaks volumes about the power of the traditional PC Gaming approach.

Back in the Deus Ex 1 era, nearly every Unreal Engine game shipped with a map editor or received one within the early lifespan (as did many other PC games, although the Unreal Engine was generally the best for it). By the time of the Deus Ex 2 era many did not; nowadays with the PC versions as latter-day ports at best, almost none do. This directly affects my immediate enjoyment, it diminishes the potential scope of the games, and it severely cuts into the longevity of the titles released nowadays for PCs.

There are other issues I could go into, but I think this is probably the most crucial problem with the current direction of things vis-a-vis PC Gaming, and I also don't want to get myself started on some of the other things

 

[hal]

I'm still interested in hearing about what people think this means to PC gaming. So far most posts seem to be about how this makes they feel, etc. What I'd like to hear is specifics about how they think this will negatively impact them.

By "this", are you refering to the order in which Unreal Engine 4 is being optimized? Just looking for clarification.

To jump off in a somewhat different direction and speaking generically, I think that most PC gamers are on something of a witch hunt when it comes to spotting things that may or may not affect the platform of their choice. That includes the omission of anything in-game that has either previously existed or would be of benefit to the PC gamer. By default, that also includes any addition to any aspect of the game that even mentions a dedicated console, up to and including references in the documentation or settings.

It's reached this level because time and again PC gamers have seen developer after developer jump ship for greener pastures. They've seen revered franchises turn into "console first, PC second" ventures. Sometimes those fears have merit and sometimes they do not.

I personally don't think anyone would mind a console to PC port as long as a developer addressed the hardware and gamer behaviors that make the PC different from a dedicated console. PCs have higher resolution screens that allow for smaller fonts and the presentation of more information. Mice are highly precise and are fundamentally different input devices than game pads, thriving on an economy of movement. Online gamers have different demands, such as lots of information about things that concern servers and the people playing on them. The standard for social features is also much higher on the PC, though you could argue that the new consoles have done a much better job of standardizing them (however low that standard may be).

There are developers that make sure to offer products that work well on both. Then you have a handful of successful PC developers that make damned sure they deliver a top-notch PC product and then support the hell out of it. Sure, there are very few of them.

In short, there are very real fears as often as not there are games that are moved from console to PC without much thought (or perhaps care) given to address the differences between them. Then there's the witch hunt.

 

[WarTourist]

By "this", are you refering to the order in which Unreal Engine 4 is being optimized? Just looking for clarification.

Correct.

To jump off in a somewhat different direction and speaking generically, I think that most PC gamers are on something of a witch hunt when it comes to spotting things that may or may not affect the platform of their choice.

I agree. It's these vague fears that I'm trying to get folks to articulate specifics about in relation to the engine.

 

[Hyrage]

I really don't know why people are blaming console exclusives being port to PC. If the game is poor on PC, whatever the reason is, it's not about the port... it's all about the Game Design.

So, better blame the game designers about that one.
It's like, how do you want to port Soldier of Fortune 2 on X-Box 1 when it wouldn't even be be possible to lean!!? It's 100% for PC, don't make a port...

 

[WarTourist]

Well, I think examples speak loudly. Mike Capps also brought up the Deus Ex games recently, and that was a game that due to a primary focus on the console release for the second game was severely limited in many ways (map size, UI, depth of the RPG elements and the abilities of choices to make actual differences in the plot, etc etc).

Hi Keith. These are all be design decisions of the developer, not limitations of the engine (Unreal Engine 2).

 

[MonsOlympus]

Also something to consider here, just quickly, might be not just Console to PC ports but also the other way around. Its hard to tell exactly what platform a game was designed for originally at times, you could say GTA:SA for eg is a Console game ported to PC but what separates it from something like UT3 which is a PC port to Console apparently?

There are a few titles I could pick out which could be considered more PC titles that have ended up on Consoles, just like there are games which move the other way. To me though the best ports are the ones you cant pick which is a preferred platform for the developer.

When you look at the reviews of the PC to Console case I think you might be surprised when you compare to the other way around, which do you think score higher or lower for each?

 

[gregori]

There is a difference between not liking something and just trying to fake yourself into believing that it doesn't exist.

I'd rather have games like Assassin's Creed actually come to PC with a pretty terrible UI than not have games coming to PC at all. Recent comments by many people would tend to make you believe that PC gaming is going to disappear soon.

I don't like having games brought to PC that don't feel tailored to the PC, but I'd rather have a neutered experience on the Pc than no experience at all. This isn't a case of just "settling". The amount of games coming for the PC that are at all interesting had dropped into depressing numbers between 2003-2007, and I, for one, am glad to see developers/publishers starting to give it a second look now, regardless of the quality of the "port". FFS, it can't be WORSE than it was on the consoles (in general, I know some are .

I frankly, would rather not

I'll probably take my time and money elsewhere.

 

[KeithZG]

Hi Keith. These are all be design decisions of the developer, not limitations of the engine (Unreal Engine 2).

Umm, "yes" as far as the core UE2 part goes (obviously, since UT2k3/2k4 didn't suffer similarly). But the problems came about because they modified the engine while developing a console version, and with their problems this then imposed engine limitations which affected what they could manage to do with the game itself.

These "design decisions", due to the importance of the console version being released simultaneously, meant that the PC version suffered from many of the shortfalls of the Xbox version such as very tiny levels.

It's true to say that nothing in the engine made these shortcomings inevitable, but in the case of Invisible War the combination of engine difficulties plus the need to work on the console platform resulted in a stillborn game.

If you want to speak of UE4, one could claim that by developing for consoles first instead of simultaneously this could be avoided. My counterargument is that while engine-wise taking an existing PC game/engine and slimming it down for consoles has worked wonderfully (see UT on the Dreamcast, Deus Ex working on the PS2, Quake on the N64, etc etc, and of course UE2X in general) the latest batch of console-then-PC games have all been horribly unoptimized (see R6:Vegas, Assassin's Creed, even the Lego Star Wars games).

My further fear is that the emphasis on consoles will mean that the technology chosen won't be portable for one reason or another, such as legal reasons (much the same as UE3 has proven so far) or even merely technical ones.

 

[hal]

These "design decisions", due to the importance of the console version being released simultaneously, meant that the PC version suffered from many of the shortfalls of the Xbox version such as very tiny levels.

Be more specific. Which design decisions are these?

 

[Sir_Brizz]

I don't "fake myself" into beliving anything, i just don't buy most console ports because i don't enjoy them, why buy something you don't like?

I simply meant many people would rather ignore the ports exist at all. They get no air time from consumers or marketers, really.

And i enjoy them even less played on the PC, because they where playtested and balanced for the Consoles, so when you go at it with the better control of a mouse and keyboard, they tend to be very easy to beat, and it gets even more dull.

I think you're overexaggerating the difference between what a PC offers and what a PC can do. Again, it's personal preference, but I'm okay paying for a game if it either gives me a decent movie-like experience, or an incomparable multiplayer experience. However, I think the lines between "console game" and "PC game are blurring, and I personally don't really care.

Over the past two years we have gotten WAY better gamepad support in PC games, WAY better tweaked experiences for PC gaming, improved support, improved performance, etc. Frankly, many developers are throwing out the old notions of "game platform" and "anything platform" and simply looking at everything as a platform. It should have been done a decade ago, it should be lightyears ahead of where it is right now.

You could just as well have played it on a Console, infact you probably should have, since that is what it was designed, tested and balanced for, it would have been a better gaming experiance for you.
That's my big beef with the whole thing, if they don't bother to port the games propperly, change them to have a PC freindly UI, controls, and rebalance the gameplay for a mouse, then you are playing sloppy seconds, you are getting a degraded gaming experiance even compared to the Console version (and definately compared to a PC exclusive title).

I just don't think these things really need to be done. More and more PC gamers are willing to be so-called "armchair gamers" because there are a crapload of excellent games that are designed that way.

I have a 360 controller hooked up to my computer, and I'm not afraid to use it when the game is designed better for it. However, your comments simply look past excellent PC games that are multi-platform like Bioshock and Gears of War because of several titles that don't live up to the expectation of a QUALITY GAME for that platform. That's fine, that's why they are multi-platform.

Frankly, I know how you feel from many different angles. Recently I bought Guitar Hero 3 for my Wii, and, in comparison to the 360/PS3 version of the game it is really a neutered experience. That's not because any multi-platform game on the Wii is bad, it's because that developer didn't spend time on the right things for that platform (IMO).

See, that is where we differ you and i, i would rather have fewer games, if it just ment i got better made for PC ones, its a tradeoff, sure, its not ideal certainly, but i'd rather have it that way to be honest.

That will continue to be where we differ, I guess. The reason that the PS2 has a huge catalog of awesome games is not really because the PS2 is a great platform, but because it had a boatload of games released for it. The truth is, every platform pretty much has the same ratio of crap to quality, so getting more games in general automatically means you are going to get more quality games.

However, it is clear from this discussion that our opinions on what is "quality" are vastly different.

I don't think, not even for a second, that PC gameing is ever going to die, even if all multi-platform titles made today and from now on suddenly decided "we will nolonger port to the PC ever again", somebody would pick up the slack, for all the talk of the Console market beeing bigger, the PC market is still so big that nobody would considder letting it go untapped.

Yes, we will continue to get what is being bought. Nancy Drew, World of Warcraft clones and Barbie's Great Pony Adventure. Those are some outstanding PC titles that really set it apart from the crowd!

I can't believe that you would say the PC market never went anywhere. It sure as heck went somewhere. I'm not talking about games selling on the PC, I'm talking about games that I enjoy being made for the PC. I hate the entire business model surrounding MMOs, and if you don't count those, between 2003 and early 2007, only a depressing number of good games came out for the PC. All I can say is, thank heavens that is beginning to change.

 

[MaestroMaus]

Yeah, it kills me when I dig through old CGW's from the late 90's and see the release schedule for PC games back then . PC gaming may not be dying, but it most definitely is changing. A potential migration away from retail will have huge and far reaching ramifications.

This "change" your talking about would be the maturing of the game industry. That is not a new or unexpected phenomenon. I am curious about your last sentence though. You think that the PC is so flexible it ends up with most of the games being open source or freeware games?

I'm still interested in hearing about what people think this means to PC gaming. So far most posts seem to be about how this makes they feel, etc. What I'd like to hear is specifics about how they think this will negatively impact them.

You ask to the diehard underground UT crowd on a site like BU to answer objectively about the changing market?...

Definitely. Keep in mind though that neither MS nor Sony consider shipping on PC a violation of that exclusivity.

Thanks, that is interesting.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

This "change" your talking about would be the maturing of the game industry. That is not a new or unexpected phenomenon. I am curious about your last sentence though. You think that the PC is so flexible it ends up with most of the games being open source or freeware games?

I'm pretty sure he is talking about the shift towards digital distribution.

 

[Grobut]

Well Sir_Brizz, i think it's obvious that we are not going to agree on alot of things here, nothing wrong with that, that's the nature of opinions afterall, so lets us just agree to disagree for the sake of our blood preassure levels.

So i'll keep this short and sweet and just adress a couple of misunderstandings there:

1) I didn't overlook games like Bioshock, i just don't think they are "excellent" games, not by a long shot, they barely reach the "mediocre" level on my game excellence scale, excellent is Deus-Ex, or System Shock-2, Bioshock? shallow in comparison..
We do indeed seem to have very different ideas about what makes a good game.

2) When i said the PC market never went anywhere, i ment you and me, the PC gamers (we are the market, the gaming biz is the manufacturer and distributor), we're still here, this forum is full of PC gamers that are still here, and we all still want excellent PC games.
The demand never went away, its the supply that has changed, just look what happens when a good PC exclusive (such as "Sins of a solar empire" or "The Witcher" for instance, not my cup of tea but many liked them) gets released, people most definately buy them!
But alot of PC gamers are like me, alot of us aren't really satiesfied with the games the Biz is churning out thease days, so we don't buy them, and then the Biz says the market is dead.. its not dead, its starving to death because you arent feeding it! we need games we actually want to buy!

 

[Sir_Brizz]

1) I didn't overlook games like Bioshock, i just don't think they are "excellent" games, not by a long shot, they barely reach the "mediocre" level on my game excellence scale, excellent is Deus-Ex, or System Shock-2, Bioshock? shallow in comparison..
We do indeed seem to have very different ideas about what makes a good game.

That's because you are living back in the late 90s on a wing and a prayer Those games ARE good, but they are not modern games. If Deus Ex were released today, it wouldn't be as successful.

2) When i said the PC market never went anywhere, i ment you and me, the PC gamers (we are the market, the gaming biz is the manufacturer and distributor), we're still here, this forum is full of PC gamers that are still here, and we all still want excellent PC games.

But you are overexaggerating what PC gamers expect today.

The demand never went away, its the supply that has changed, just look what happens when a good PC exclusive (such as "Sins of a solar empire" or "The Witcher" for instance, not my cup of tea but many liked them) gets released, people most definately buy them!

And I didn't like either of the aforementioned games. I didn't think either of them were particularly noteworthy and most people only seemed to buy SOSE because it didn't have DRM, not because they wanted to play it particularly.

Still, which of those games is still on NPDs top ten? None of them. Instead there is Nancy Drew and World of Warcraft. You can guess what publishers (read: the people with the money) read into this.

But alot of PC gamers are like me, alot of us aren't really satiesfied with the games the Biz is churning out thease days, so we don't buy them, and then the Biz says the market is dead.. its not dead, its starving to death because you arent feeding it! we need games we actually want to buy!

Many "old school" PC gamers have moved on to consoles. I think you overestimate what people want, I don't think your average gamer on ANY platform is as picky in any way as you seem to be. I would be willing to bet they are more like me and would play Bioshock or Halo if they had the opportunity to.

The fact is, the people who don't play MMOs on PC that would buy other games are typicall teenager age or older in the late 90s, which means that now they are getting into mid 20s/30s now and don't have time to spend on the complexities of having a PC for gaming.

That';s not to say that some of them like us don't keep going at it anyway, but I have turned to consoles to a certain extent for myself, not because they are better, but they are MUCH easier to sit down at for 20 minutes and play, whereas PCs in general do not have that simplicity.

 

[WarTourist]

My counterargument is that while engine-wise taking an existing PC game/engine and slimming it down for consoles has worked wonderfully

I'll have to disagree with that, based on loads of primary experience, but to each their own. I'm my opinion you're still discussing game specific decisions rather than engine imposed limitations.

 

[KeithZG]

I'll have to disagree with that, based on loads of primary experience, but to each their own. I'm my opinion you're still discussing game specific decisions rather than engine imposed limitations.

Ouch, sounds like a burn to me, but with what you're quoting me on I was mainly thinking of UE2X, and I'm hoping for your sake you aren't saying that was a flop although in all seriousness I can't say I know myself how much optimization went into UE2 for the console side of things before the split to UE2X.

Be more specific. Which design decisions are these?

I'll admit it's been ages since I fired up Deus Ex 2, but really what I said at the end of what you quoted keeps coming to mind whenever I think of that game, I'll be more clear though. The levels were tiny and sliced up with so many between-map loads, and this was a design decision necessitated by the limited RAM on the Xbox (64MB ain't much!).

Of course the real world is complicated, you can look at any fault of any game and blame quite a few different things (everyone has their favorite targets). I think the claustrophobically-small Deus Ex 2 levels split up with loads into multiple maps is a relatively pure example of where technical limitations combined with the necessity of the console version created a PC game which was less than it could have been.

The other elements, such as the floaty mouse movement or the overly-large UI, were things that came about also due to the console influence but are arguably more, as WarTourist has pointed out, along the lines of pure "design decisions" rather than technical limitations. Obviously other gripes such as the universal ammo system are purely design choices (and matters of opinion), but I think often things fall into a bit of a gray area between choice and technical necessity; for example, their modified engine was being stretched so thin that any hope for multiplayer was dashed (which is where the aforementioned ammo system would have fit in better, come to think of it).

But I know, I know . . . it's hard for me to objectively quantify this, since I'm still pining over the original game. But, at risk of sounding like a broken record, the reason why people still to this day tout the original game rather than the sequel is, I think, reason enough to think about what made them different. And while the original taxed system resources, as the devs themselves noted (I have a PC Gamer magazine from about when Deus Ex 2 was first announced, and IIRC Warren Spector was joking that finally now that they were working on the sequel people's computers could run the original), especially RAM due to the sheer complexity and clutter of the levels (and the conversations and the choices), the sequel had to fit into the Xbox's limitations and was thus quantitatively less than the original. Sure, that's a "design decision", but it's one that was necessitated by

......but I'll shut up now, sorry folks! It's kindof one of my buttons, heh.