What are you currently playing?

I'm really sorry to hear that, Komodo. More so, I'm worried by hearing that. My PC isn't the best of all, and I've been waiting for this game for so long, and been especially excited these last days. I even called in sick today because, what the hell, you only live once. I'm about to start it up any minute now. Wish me good luck.

Edit: I had to delete a lot of good games to clear space for GTA V, including Skyrim. It really broke my heart, especially with Skyrim because of the awesome save I've created. All gone. I never play it anymore, but still... all gone R.I.P.
But that was when preloading it. Now I had to update it again to get the remaining necessary files, and that required a lot more space. ...So I had to delete two more games. :sad:

 

Well, so much for that. I didn't even get as far as starting it up. I can not express my anger enough right now, yet I'm really not that surprised because it's just so FCKN TYPICAL AEGHAEIGBAIUEGBAEJOG



Edit again: Now I need -even more- space to install the latest Nvidia GeForce driver, so I have to delete another game. And with this final memorial speech, I say goodbye to Garry's Mod. It's been one hell of a run. Almost three thousand hours, to be more specific. I realize I didn't spend much time with it these last months, perhaps its even been a year, and for that I am sorry. Gmod held a special part in my heart, and it always will. Goodbye, old friend. *Lowers coffin into the ground*
(Not that I can't just download it again later on )

UPDATE: I DID IT! And it plays really nice too, almost no lag. Steam and Rockstar Games suggests that you make a new windows user, I did everything except that. First I exited steam, but it wouldn't exit properly so I Ended The Process. I then updated my video drivers so they're up to date. When I then tried starting Steam, it wouldn't let me log in. This has happened to me before, and it happens sometimes when you force-quit steam. Luckily, I remembered the fix: Deleted all Steam files except Steam.exe and Steamapps, and started Steam. It then let me log in, and GTA V would then download properly and start installing. It was actually a flaw in Steam that caused me to fix it. I got lucky, pretty much.

 

GTA V looks nice, but I think Rockstar no longer knows how to make games for PC. Back when my PS3 worked, Red Dead Redemption was for me one of the best games of that console generation. However, my memories of the terrible GTA IV PC port left a sour aftertaste. Apparently Max Payne 3 had a pretty good PC port (minus the massive HDD space requirement), but I'm not so convinced judging by history - though I've seen the game on PS3 and it looked awesome there. Anyway, sucks to hear about your mixed or outright ridiculously terrible experiences with the game guys. hwell:

I smirked when my friends showed me that and had to take a screenshot. Some of the other books on there have pretty funny names as well, plus there's one that looks like an autobiography of everyone's favourite - Ilija the sniper.

 

Alright, so a few things to address here quick. (Alright, maybe not quite quick in hindsight after writing this)

-Steam has a cloud backup of your saves. Hence why whenever you uninstall game, the option is just titled, "Delete Local Content." The saves should be there when you reinstall the game.

-Yes, the game is massive. Games are only going to get more massive. Lots of people are starting to feel this as a result of lots of people building PC's around the end of last gen; same as lots of people would say to "put double the money of your CPU into your video card because it will make a much bigger difference" (which was actually wise advice back then), and now lots of people are having issues with CPU bottlenecks, now people who have gotten used to filling up their Hard Drives with fifty 10-20 GB AA titles at once are now finding that they simply don't have as much room as they used to, since higher resolution cutscenes and textures mean that file sizes are going to exponentially increase (remember, going from something like 720p to 1080p more than doubles the pixel count), which is why every "next gen" game seems to be 50+ GB.

-I'm not sure exactly how well this translates into actual user experience (since negative experiences are more likely to prompt a review), but about 1/5 to 1/4 of the reviews on Steam seem to be negative, and almost all of them cite some kind of game-breaking bug. For just about everyone else, the game is a fantastic port (will list some of the most impressive aspects below), and it's been received exceedingly well amongst nearly everybody who's gotten it working.

As for the port, here's some fun facts for those who haven't seen it in action yet:

-Built in benchmarking. Not exactly revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, and it has a few issues (namely not working before beating the first mission, which I expect to get fixed) but this feature is surprisingly lacking in a lot of PC games, and at least nice to check and see if an explosion is gonna tank your system before you run into one in a main story mission or something.

-Built in VRAM usage tracking in the menu. This was a feature also in Max Payne 3, but that game hardly pushed VRAM like this one can if you max everything out. It seems to be more of a prediction tool (moving the bar into the yellow range seems to introduce risk for occasional stutters), but when the most we're used to getting in PC games is a message saying "Ultra Textures need 3 GB of Video memory", seeing the memory impact of every little setting is a godsend if you're like me and trying to squeeze the most out of every little setting on 2 GB without having to run 50 individual benchmark tests to see how much stutter I get from each configuration. This thing is a settings tweaker's dream come true.

-Speaking of such settings, the configuration levels are over the top. There are:
*26 different graphics settings to tweak, which is not including basic things like Vsync, Resolution, how alt-tabbing works, etc.
*5 different levels of adjustable sensitivity for different moves and vehicles
*126 settings overall to tweak to your heart's content, at my count. This is of course not counting key bindings, as well as the "Facebook" menu which might have even more options if you activate and link Facebook to it... for whatever reason.

-Seemless transition between mouse and keyboard, even simultaneous input receiving from both. Apparently I'm not alone in preferring to drive with a controller, and shoot with a mouse and keyboard.

-Low baseline standard for performance (possibly RAM aside, that might not really be very configurable), tons of painstaking optimization. Picking the lowest settings for textures and shadows doesn't do some kind of global set size like some half-assed ports; you'll find less important textures and shadows get muddy and aliased respectively, while main characters and the most centerpiece models still look great, all with minimal VRAM cost.

-Hell, some guy apparently got single player playable framerates at 720p on a GT 430 and an AMD Dual Core CPU.

Once the launch bugs, Komo's really strange issues, and modding support get worked out, this might be one of the best ports we've seen for any game on PC in a long time (when it works). I don't know if it's quite two years worth of work, but it's clearly had a lot put into it.

Also, Komo saying it looks no better than the Xbox One version is likely stemming from his insanely over the top issues with the game (which, sadly, isn't exactly out of character with some other recent issues he's had, like the recent Homeworld Remake constantly giving him a BSOD at launch, much to the support forum's confusion). It's far from perfect, and it still has some issues that reallllly need to be sorted out, but they've gone way above and beyond what the extreme majority of developers would even consider putting into their PC port, and it's sad that these major launch issues are basically the only thing standing between Rockstar and a standing ovation.

GTA IV <<<<<< Most PC Ports << Max Payne 3 < GTA V (when it works)

Also Komo, Skaara: did both of you guys preload the game? I've heard stuff about some Steam games recently having issues caused by weird hiccups/issues with the preload, which would also explain why deleting and redownloading Steam data would fix it.

 

I re-downloaded it and it didn't help.

If these issues were worldwide, I wouldn't give a shit. These would get fixed in no time.

But like with Homeworld, either it's just me having this problem or a very limited amount of players, which means that it will never be addressed or is so far down the list of issues, that it might as well not be on it at all. The millions of "happy customers" singing praise in a Rockstar circlejerk are my problem (Also the people who encourage them to delay their games on PC by buying it now). I'm not loud enough to be noticed. And their stereotypical "we don't work late hours, or on weekends, or at all" support is unhelpful as ever, they are clueless and just give me standard tips like "try turning it off and on again".

They had a rocky start on the consoles. Then they had a rocky start on the new consoles. They could have learned a valuable lesson. They could have used some of those fucking billions they've earned (They even sell it for a higher price than everybody else, 2000 RUR vs an average 599/699 RUR for other AAA titles. Even Hardline is just 1499 RUR on Origin) to invest into dedicated servers or into fixing their useless appendix (Whose only role in the human body is to occasionally flare up and try to murder you) called social club. But they didn't.

Saits Row 3 and 4 look much better and run much better than GTA5. If I want to play with my friends, I just have to click "join game" and thirty seconds later I'm already doing suplexes on cops with my pal. How did these motherfuckers manage to do it with a minimal budget and without spending two years "polishing" their games?

In GTA 5 I have to look at a spinny icon for ten minutes waiting for it to "access session details" just to be greeted with a "Couldn't join session" and get booted back to single player that I don't care about and look at a loading screen for another half hour.

And yes, I would imagine I would call it a good game.





If I could play it.

 

Well for starters, they run better because they're much older games. GTA V pretty much stressed the shit out of the old consoles, I was lucky to get around 20 FPS floating around in the water or in busy downtown areas on 360.

Online is great when it works. That's not always a luxury even console players had at launch, sadly. Hopefully it gets sorted out.

As for looking better, well, I'm pretty sure that can be chalked up to glitchiness. Sucks that it doesn't work; is there a way to try and take advantage of the self refund thing that big steam message talked about when it was a gift, or is that just out of the question?

 

Honestly, with all the pre-release news, then those screenshots of the decent graphics options screen and the wonderful benchmark results that were published, I was excited and genuinely thought that a new Rockstar game had finally received the PC port it deserved. And that may indeed be the case for most, but if as much as a fifth or quarter of people experienced problems to write about (like you said Potarto), then it's far from a smooth launch and you're damn right it doesn't deserve a standing ovation if so many gamers can't play it properly. And it's disappointing, because this time it looks as though those who did get it to work are getting a brilliant experience, but a large fraction of others can't access it at all.

Oh well, at least it's another good excuse to stay off the hype train and wait for a price drop before getting GTA V.

 

Basically. Wait til the dust clears, then give it a shot I say.

 

Sad to see people unable to play GTAV. It seems every game that is released these days is unplayable for a number of gamers, or so I read with every new release. It's quite a gamble now to buy a game these days, hoping it will actually work at all. Quite disgraceful, really. Far Cry 4 is the last game that just never worked for me for reasons other than computer specs.

My brother got GTA for PC and thankfully he hasn't had any problems. I only wish I had a PC that could run it! I doubt mine would well. I've played it to death on my ps3, but I'd happily play through for the dozenth time if only I could do it on PC with the added features, and the graphics really make the world look amazing. Easily the best visuals in an open-world game to date. My favourite new feature would have to be the first person view. It looks cool, and very fun; though Rockstar clearly don't have a lot of FPS experience and it is quite evident in the perspective and animations of their first person view mode, but it's really an awesome view to play in. Feels very immersive, like you're a part of Los Santos.

Anyway... I just got Dying Light on pc, and I've gotten back into Red Dead Redemption (and the Undead Nightmare DLC) on ps3. So my gaming time is being spent between those two games, with a bit of State of Decay sprinkled on top when I'm in the mood. Lotta zombie action...

 

Red Dead Redemption was brilliant, I'd love a sequel to that (with an entirely new protagonist preferably, but it would be cool to see some of the other characters return).

I've been playing a bit of sZone-online lately, which is basically Stalker Online after the name change. In numerous aspects it feels a lot like the Stalker series and I have already had some extremely atmospheric experiences with it, but it is also such a shit game in so many ways that I get really frustrated and can't play it for too long in one sitting. I think I might post my full impressions of it in a mini-review on Steam later.

EDIT: No wait, looks like Stalker Online is still a thing on its own... so apparently sZone is just a clone, according to some. I might try Stalker Online and see if it's playable. I'll return here once I've figured out what all of this is about.

EDIT #2: Ok, so the developer of Stalker Online asks for your phone number (among other details) when registering. I put in a fake one, made an account, downloaded the game and updated it, but I can't log in because I first need to confirm my number... which is impossible, as it is fake. You can change this in the options, but I don't feel like giving them my real number plus I don't understand why this supposedly Russia-based company has a website that uses the internet country code for Somalia. Thus I won't be playing the game. However, from the footage I've seen, it looks almost exactly the same as sZone-online - only perhaps with a better frame rate, but this varies with each video since people use different hardware. This is all shady and obscure as fuck, probably as a result of some disagreement between the devs and further copyright issues related with the name.

EDIT #3: Yep, further research brings me to the conclusion that a single development studio worked on "STALKER Online" at first; at some point the developers had a falling out or disagreed about some key choices, so two different teams were born from the ashes of the first one. Both teams retained the right to work using the same engine and assets that they had previously made/compiled together, but only one studio kept the rights to the name (hence the other one became sZone-onilne). The core of both games remains the same, as well as their intent: they aim to make money off Stalker fans disappointed by the absence of the sequel - like us - by adding microtransactions into their games and making them pay2win.

 

So it looks like my FX 6300 is the major bottleneck for my system, yet again. I thought it was maybe VRAM since the in-game settings for GTA V showed me being near the cap, but tracking it, that stuff barely passes 1.5 GB when playing. And every stutter seems to coincide with a large jump in CPU usage and a massive drop in GPU usage. So, back to the overclocking board to see if I can get the game a little more stable.

 

Wow, a lot of issues. I hope it gets resolved soon.

@Potarto (last post): I really doubt your computer's specs, and even Komo's, are what is causing the poor performance in GTA5. I'm pretty sure it's the fault of the developers and their poor game optimization -which is hard to perfect, now days (at least it seems like it), since the in-game worlds are so F'N' huge.

 

Actually I think I may have nailed down the problem to being an issue with alt-tabbing. There's already a bit of keyboard lag when you do, and coming back seemed to be a clear trigger for some major lag and stuttering. Would explain why it seemed to run worse the longer I played, guess I'll have to have my laptop open nearby (and undo the additional overclock that didn't seem to alleviate the issue). Probably won't see that fixed, since it seems to be a rare issue, and some games just don't alt tab well at all.

 

Well, I do hope that was, the thing, at fault.

I began playing, Battlefield 2 online, again. The accuracy is pretty horrible in game, but it's quite fun. Example, you can be standing, only a few feet (a meter) away from an enemy and both you and him will be spraying bullets everywhere -well, for the most part, anyway. Just recently, though, I've discovered one weapon that is keen at close combat situations (no not a shotgun). It's an assault rifle that can be equip when you choose the "assault" class. I've managed to skyrocket through the current-in-game rankings, during battles, in a flash.
I'd switch to BF3 or BF4; but, those games don't support my OS. When I upgrade, though -my OP that is- I'm more than excited to give those two a try.

 

Bear (heh) with me guys i finally played the witcher 2 assassin of kings enhanced ubermensch edition

And its great! absolutely love it and have been playing it non stop

 

Nice! All those new "fans" jumping on the hype bandwagon for W3 without even trying the first two games are really getting on my nerves, so it's good to see people getting interested in the series as a whole too.

 

Right, so it looks like I didn't have to wait long. :lol: Yesterday I was gifted a copy of the game and then played it for more than 5 hours straight after installing it. I am having plenty of fun with it so far and my experiences have been smooth (I'm using GTX MSI 770 TwinFrozr 2GB VRAM GPU, i5-3350P 3.1GHz CPU, 8 gigs of RAM, but I'm playing on the fairly low resolution of 1440x900 since that's the highest one my monitor has). I've already seen the settings screen and heard about all the optimisation features pre-release, as well as reading about them here in Potarto's posts, however they still impressed me when I first saw them in-game.

The game tells me that (running with "very high" textures, "ultra" reflections, VSync turned on, MSAA turned off and everything else between normal and highest) requires about 150MB more video memory than my card has, yet on these settings I can play the game at a pretty much constant 60 fps with seemingly no visible drops that could impact gameplay. In the benchmarking tool my frame rate jumped around between 52 and 60 frames per second, most of the time staying near the top of that band, so the fluctuation there was unnoticeable to me as well. There was only one time when I got lower numbers, which was only for a split second right at the end of the benchmark when the big explosion happens - that was when it dropped to 39 fps. Although GTA V tells me I've exceeded my video memory limit, I have not experienced any crashes or stuttering thus far. I'm sure the situation wouldn't be as dandy on a 1080p resolution. Nevertheless, I can't gripe about bad optimisation based on my own experiences.

At the moment I am not very far at all in the singleplayer story as I've spent most of my time in GTA Online. I plan to keep it that way for a while, as my final sixth form exams are coming up soon and I'd rather just have something fun to relax with after a bit of revision each day instead of getting too invested in the game's plot and becoming distracted. I can say that's it been really entertaining so far. The only thing that bugs me are the long loading times... no wait, there's also one other issue: hackers. They are not everywhere of course, but I've already seen one in a session and looked up many more instances online. They do this strange thing where they can shoot moneybags at you, giving you ridiculously huge amounts of cash (whilst they have god mode turned on and you can do nothing about it).

Thankfully Rockstar seems to know the difference between those who hack and those who are victims of these attacks; according to one FAQ I read, you will not be banned if you receive this money by force. Rockstar Games does scheduled checks of financial activity of all players in GTA Online, so during that time they may ban the hacker if they find them and remove the unfairly gained money from all accounts without any disciplinary action. However, they will not take away anything you bought with that money, so as long as you never get mistaken for a hacker yourself - being the victim of this could actually be beneficial. :lol: I haven't been shot at with money personally, but someone I know has been.

Ok, there's another thing that is a bit annoying, which is Rockstar Games Social Club. It's a useless DRM platform. Fortunately, it is nowhere near as intrusive as Uplay or such shit, but it's still completely unnecessary. Regardless, despite of that nitpicking, I'm loving GTA V.

 

Steam works better for GTA V Online, than the SocialClub system does, which is designed for GTA V Online. It's rediculous, but hey, it's indeed not as bad as Uplay. I just thank the gods they didn't decide to use Games For Windows Live :amen:

 

Indeed, I am so glad that monstrosity is dead.

Right, I just found some more posts online where people who were shot at with money say that they have gotten a 16 day ban, then once they're back in they get a dunce cap and can only play with cheaters. So yeah, perhaps the FAQ Rockstar made isn't particularly reliable... or maybe those posts I'm talking about are actual cheaters who are lying. Regardless, this means that you should do your best to avoid pricks like that as it's impossible to know 100% what will happen.

Also, I just did my first heist with Potarto yesterday and it was really fun. We should team up sometime Skaara.

 

I don't think I've been as maddeningly jealous of someone at any point in my life. I wonder if my AMD CPU is the source of my issues, I'm determined to figure out what is causing this issue for me.

And yeah, we definitely need a fourth guy.