Dark Souls PC was 'half-assed,' but Dark Souls 2 director promises more 'care'
"A lot of it was not very well done, sort of half-assed," Dark Souls 2 director Yui Tanimura told Shacknews via translator regarding the PC version of Dark Souls 1, while promising a much better experience for the sequel.
A fan petition successfully convinced publisher Namco Bandai and developer From Software to bring Dark Souls to PC. Unfortunately, the final product wasn't particularly polished, with From admitting they were having a "tough time" making the transition from console to PC development. The end result was a direct port that required user-created mods to live up to PC standards.
"A lot of it was not very well done, sort of half-assed," Dark Souls 2 director Yui Tanimura told Shacknews via translator (Tak Miyazoe), while promising a much better experience for the sequel.
"Yes, we will definitely put more priority on the PC. Last time, we started working on PC after the console version was complete," Tanimura explained. "This time, because we are considering the PC from the beginning, you can be sure there will be more care put into PC development."
Whereas the PC version of Dark Souls came out months after the console versions, Dark Souls 2 will launch simultaneously on all platforms. The hands-off demo of Dark Souls 2 that we saw was also running on PC hardware, as well.
This should come as good news to PC fans of the franchise disappointed by the lackluster port of the first game. That release sold "over 300,000 downloads on PC," according to Namco Bandai VP Carlson Choi. Figures like those likely made it incredibly easy for Namco to consider
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Shacknews
replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Dark Souls PC was 'half-assed,' but Dark Souls 2 director promises more 'care'.
"A lot of it was not very well done, sort of half-assed," Dark Souls 2 director Yui Tanimura told Shacknews via translator regarding the PC version of Dark Souls 1, while promising a much better experience for the sequel.-
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Sony owns Demon Souls, doubt it will ever go to another platform.
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they've already proven they know how to make the game part of the game. the only thing i was ever worried about for this was the back end stuff. still, there is a lot of room to screw up in that department and i'm going to keep being worried until announcements are made (like using gfwl or not and various back end multiplayer improvements like that sweet p2p friends list prioritization mod made earlier this month). i didn't play des so i'll be interested in seeing how lag and stuff works with dedicated servers versus the p2p bsfishing lag shit fest das was a lot of the time.
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Being able to choose whom you play with is not in keeping with Souls.
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yeah, fuckers, you put this on PC in proper form and im going to have to protest because i doubt ill ever get a thing done on my computer again. at least on PS3 it takes 3 or 4 hours to load up, and requires me to fuck about with the remote. that is enough to keep me from playing constantly. but if its just a simple icon on my PC im just going to close the shop now and find a fat wealthy woman to pay my way while i play DS2 :(
i dont want that kind of life :( -
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They should just hire that mod team/dude.
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With them taking the PC port seriously, I am guessing this has more to do with the next-gen consoles being based on x86 than us complaining about the PC port performance.
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But isn't DS2 a current gen title? What difference does next-gen hardware make?
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They have more experience working with code and architecture based around x86, I figure. They have probably had those devkits in house for a while. I doubt that this will come out on PS4 or the NextBox, but it is just a guess.
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it's a current gen title
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Yeah when the CPU architecture is the same (GPU architecture was already the same), cross-platform development is vastly simplified with the only thing you need to really care for his hardware constraints (easy) and platform specific API's.
Your assertion seems the most accurate to me as well.
What it may be - playing off your idea - is next generation consoles are x86 based and so From Software figures they will focus more attention on PC development, gaining them more experience for future console development. They can essentially throw everything about the PowerPC dervied Xbox 360 architecture and PS3 Cell processor architecture out the door after this game is released.
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Pretty sure it was recently confirmed that the PC version wouldn't be using GFWL.
Also, this is a pretty good example of the sort of demand/supply model good for PC gamers. It's one thing to sign a petition demanding something is made available, it's another to actually buy it. It certainly didn't hurt that someone made the mod to unlock 60fps etc.... From Software should probably give him a credit in Dark Souls 2 at a minimum ;)
Really nice to see the companies involved reacting to consumer interest, even if a bit cautiously at first. Much like Kickstarter projects, in the end it helps everyone when things turn out as hoped.
Good work, all round, kids!-
I wouldn't use the 60fps mod...
Since the game is framebased it means it's running twice as fast - Game time is kept through frames rather than time, much like in fighting games. PArrying for example is a 6-frame time window, 6/30 of a second or 1/5th, the time you have to time the parry right. Upping the fps to 60 means you only have 1/10th of a second all of a sudden.
While that may be fine for some people, it does kinda steer away from the intended gameplay...
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It does feel like a quick and dirty console port, but it was only added because of fan demand so I'm in the camp of just being happy they did it.
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It was stable and mostly functional, though lacked basic PC standards like actually rendering at your LCD's native resolution. Without the DSfix the game is locked to an upscaled 1024x720 no matter which resolution you choose in game, which looks like garbage. Failed to utilize multicore CPUs either, but that's only a problem for the mid-low end users. Locked to 30 fps as well, and then locked to 15 fps if it ever dropped below 30 which was bizarre. If you get 28 fps without the DSfix framerate unlocker, the game will force an unplayable 15 fps on you until it gets back up to 30. Again, not so much a problem for the high end.
Mouse support is busted without the fix, too. Though only slightly less busted with it. It's a gamepad game though so that shouldn't really bother anyone.
Game is great with a gamepad and properly tweaked DSfix setup.
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