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I fucking hate PC gaming

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Post subject: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 1:10 am

The Mad Prince

Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:04 pm
Posts: 13452
Location: Highland Kingdom

If I'm not spending 2 or 3 hours fucking with options and my video card settings or my direct x diagnostics or whatever the fuck then I'm not playing a PC game, and most of the time even when I am pulling levers and praying to the electronic Gods I'm STILL not playing a PC game in the final outcome.

Spent about an hour trying to get Penumbra: Overture to work through Steam and the shit is just way too laggy for whatever fucking reason. Something weird about my video card or some other random bullshit.

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YutzWagon

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 1:11 am

Can you handle the Aggrocrag?

Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 1:37 am
Posts: 2295
Location: USA, Georgia

Umad bro?

Seriously though, that sucks man. I guess I'm just used to it.

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Crono

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 1:46 am

B-E-N-D-E-R Beeeender

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 12:17 am
Posts: 3016
Location: Oregon, USA

:wah:

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Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 2:13 am

The Mad Prince

Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:04 pm
Posts: 13452
Location: Highland Kingdom

Crono wrote:

:wah:

haha, pretty much. But, for real, I just want to play a fucking game. It's annoying that I run into this problem more so than any other problem with my PC.

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Crono

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 2:33 am

B-E-N-D-E-R Beeeender

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 12:17 am
Posts: 3016
Location: Oregon, USA

To be honest, it's probably not an issue with the PC, but with your understanding of how to configure it or utilize settings.

I mean, if you don't know the difference between Antialiasing levels and geometry detail, you're going to run into a lot of problems, especially if your computer is more than a couple years old and wasn't even very high end to begin with (performance wise)

Why don't you start by listing your hardware specs and the settings you're trying to use. I.e. resolution, aa, af, and game specific settings.

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Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 3:18 am

The Mad Prince

Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:04 pm
Posts: 13452
Location: Highland Kingdom

I'll copy/paste what I posted from the support forums.

Spoiler

As for what I'm running the game in... fuck if I could tell you, the shit lags up at the menu screen and intro and just chugs along, I barely made it into the options once and from what I could tell just about everything was disabled and I was running at 800x600. From what I can tell it's a pretty popular issue, and since it's an indie title and not a big name company there's just a lot of weird quirks with the coding.

I say it's an issue with my PC when I suppose it's more just some sort of setting/toggle I can't find, as you stated. Usually because it's some sort of quirk with the game's compatibility with something I have. My only other major annoying PC issue was with Grim Fandango (which I'm still bitter about, I hope Lucas Arts just shits out a remake for the consoles or iPad or something), and that was simply that my PC was too new/good and all the little tricks and toggles and emulations and other junk just didn't work for that beyond giving me a halfway playable game that had a tendency to crash. This feels very similar in that respect that it's most likely some incompatibility with the latest NVidia driver or some silly setting on my video card settings like the Thread Optimization or some random background app that is conflicting that I'm unaware of.

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Crono

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 4:01 am

B-E-N-D-E-R Beeeender

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 12:17 am
Posts: 3016
Location: Oregon, USA

To play Grim Fandango, did it ever occur to you to just ... run dos? Like a live disc of it.

So ... have you tried following this? http://support.frictionalgames.com/entry/61/ Or did you just look at it and go, "RANDOM BULLSHIT" and storm off to the internet?

It looks like, in general, it was some change nvidia made in their drivers for the 8800 series. Everyone who has this issue also seems to have an 8800 card. Rolling back your drivers or, attempting their thread optimization (a feature that is likely breaking the game) fix. (This wouldn't be the only title that'd have specific problems with the 8800 chipset on newer drivers)

As for getting ancient drivers (another suggestion they give) http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_163.75.html you could try really rolling the clock back with those. (I'd suggest if you do this, it's not a permanent fix just really a test to see if it is the drivers that are the issue. Then you can freely complain to nvidia for being bitches)

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Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 12:26 pm

The Mad Prince

Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:04 pm
Posts: 13452
Location: Highland Kingdom

Nope, as I stated in the bottom of the dxdiag copy/paste I did turn off the Thread Optimization and followed all the support troubleshooting stuff. Have a little more faith in me than that. Like I said, I spent an hour or so troubleshooting this.

The only thing I haven't tried was rolling back my drivers because it appeared to be "6.14.0012.6658" and not "93.71" as stated. Although a lot of driver version #s seem a little confusing to me, so I'll probably just give this a shot anyways.

As for Grim Fandango, it's a Windows 95 game... or maybe Windows 98, either way, it doesn't run in Dos so it's one of the very few games that don't run in SCUMM or Dosbox or anything like that. They've been working on an emulation system designed specifically for that game and I believe the 4th Monkey Island game and a few other titles.

EDIT: I tried installing the drivers and it gave me a warning saying "NVIDIA Couldn't find any Drivers compatible with current hardware." I think we might have rolled back too far.

To specify my video card is a GTS 512.

DOUBLE EDIT: As I'm clueless about driver #s and versions... wouldn't the version you linked still be past version 93.71? or is that some other version # they're referring to? Right now the latest drivers put be at version 270.

TRIPLE EDIT: On the bright side I booted this up on my fiancee's mediocre at best gaming machine and it worked without a hitch (knock on wood.) I've heard that various levels lag up or lag happens when enemies show up, etc. So... who knows what'll happen in the long haul on her computer, but for the time being I can play the game in some shape or form.

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Crono

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 4:30 pm

B-E-N-D-E-R Beeeender

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 12:17 am
Posts: 3016
Location: Oregon, USA

Well, I tried to find one that was older than the oldest listed for the 512 specifically.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_181.20_whql.html

You can try that one. They suggest driver 158, but you just can't go back that far, so hopefully, if this is the issue, it's a problem introduced past the 181 release.

To note, the 181.20 and 6.1.x.x.x.x numbers don't mean the same thing and aren't measuring the same releases. The numbers that pop up with DXDIAG also list firmware versions for the hardware ... which is not the same thing as a device driver.

My suggestion still stands, did you ever just think about running that environment? There's many ways to do this, including making a virtual environment and installing Win9x onto it.

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gasline09

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 5:05 pm

I Make Physics Sexy

Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:31 pm
Posts: 2108
Location: Canaduh

1000 bucks just to play the latest games on a PC?..... No thanks.

I'm not an expert, but every time I have asked around, trying to figure out how much a decent gaming rig will cost me, it's always around a thousand bucks.

To me, it's aways came down to comfort. I want to be comfortable while I play video games, and nothing ever beats laying down on a sofa or recliner chair while playing video games.

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Colonel Panic

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 5:48 pm

Don't touch me, old man! I don't know where you've been.

Joined: Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:33 pm
Posts: 1903
Location: Sweden

Max wrote:

1000 bucks just to play the latest games on a PC?..... No thanks.

I'm not an expert, but every time I have asked around, trying to figure out how much a decent gaming rig will cost me, it's always around a thousand bucks.

To me, it's aways came down to comfort. I want to be comfortable while I play video games, and nothing ever beats laying down on a sofa or recliner chair while playing video games.

That's an unfair comparison. For a thousand bucks you'll get a way more powerful system than any of the current gen consoles. So I wouldn't call a thousand dollar system "decent". You can get a "decent" system for around 500 dollars, that you can plug into your TV and play just as comfortably as any console. And if you're the type of gamer that buys 10+ games a year (which I'll assume you are since you're on this website) you'll end up spending at least 10 bucks less on every purchase than you would on a console game. In other words you'd save 100 dollars (most likely even more) a year. Unless your'e a casual gamer, PC gaming is cheaper.

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Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 6:55 pm

The Mad Prince

Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:04 pm
Posts: 13452
Location: Highland Kingdom

Crono wrote:

To note, the 181.20 and 6.1.x.x.x.x numbers don't mean the same thing and aren't measuring the same releases. The numbers that pop up with DXDIAG also list firmware versions for the hardware ... which is not the same thing as a device driver.

My suggestion still stands, did you ever just think about running that environment? There's many ways to do this, including making a virtual environment and installing Win9x onto it.

Thanks for the heads up. As for making a virtual environment, I'll be flat out honest (and this probably won't surprise you) but that's really an extra step I don't think I'd want to take. It feels like way more trouble than it's worth and with the finite amount of time I have available to me for gaming, and the multitude of games at my disposal that I still need to play, I'd rather just end up playing something else at that point and hoping for a port compatible with newer PCs or consoles. Ultimately I think I just got burnt out on troubleshooting and throwing 4 or 5 hours of my life away on this thing. I'm sure there's a solution somewhere, but I don't care enough anymore.

That being said though, from what I've read it's a hardware issue as opposed to an OS issue. Something to do with a multicore processor sending shit out of whack. Even when I only have it running on a single core there's a lot of lag with Grim Fandango. I posted a thread about my fun adventures with that here, if you're re-interested (I recall you posting in there before): viewtopic.php?f=25&t=10806

Colonel Panic wrote:

Unless your'e a casual gamer, PC gaming is cheaper.

I can agree with this statement. Most "decent" gaming rigs will cost you maybe 500 bucks or so. Tech CONSTANTLY drops in price because new shit keeps coming out every 6 or less months it seems. The most expensive part of your gaming rig will most likely be a video card. Everything else seems to be relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things.

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Crono

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:00 pm

B-E-N-D-E-R Beeeender

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 12:17 am
Posts: 3016
Location: Oregon, USA

It's true. I've sat down to figure it out multiple times, and PC gaming comes out with a lower cost of ownership than, specifically, Xbox 360.

Even if you did spend $1000 (which is actually A LOT, I can piece together a machine for sub-$700 that will perform top of the line, for example), it's not $1000 every time you update the hardware, that is an initial cost. The supplement costs to keep the system relevant are 1/3 of that and several years apart. And it doesn't end up costing you more money in the span of a year including software, anyway.

I just think it's strange how, you can be pissed off that your Windows 95 game doesn't run on Windows 7 ... but you perfectly accept that your PlayStation 3 game will not work on an N64. I'm of the mind that, Microsoft needs to stop creating gaps of compatibility, sure, but in general, it doesn't make sense as a comparison.

As Panic said, it's also not that complicated to have a machine that is configured to use your television, including watching media and browsing the internet.

I'm just tired of this misinformed generic bashing. It's nonsense. Especially considering most people ALREADY own a computer and ALREADY paid that $500-$700 range that they could have built a custom machine with ... so the argument makes NO sense. (Or maybe four times as much if they demand Mac only)

Link, virtual environments are emulators. There's usually only hardware acceleration available for GPU (chances are the thing ran on CPU only anyway), and even then, it's wrapped into a comparability wrapper between the virtual environment and the actual runtime environment.

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Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:06 pm

The Mad Prince

Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:04 pm
Posts: 13452
Location: Highland Kingdom

Crono wrote:

I just think it's strange how, you can be pissed off that your Windows 95 game doesn't run on Windows 7 ... but you perfectly accept that your PlayStation 3 game will not work on an N64. I'm of the mind that, Microsoft needs to stop creating gaps of compatibility, sure, but in general, it doesn't make sense as a comparison.

Well, it's mostly frustration on my part. For a really long time I never had a good enough computer to play games, mostly throughout that era of gaming when Windows 95/98 was the main OS of choice, and now that I have a good PC I still can't play those games because my system is "too good" or there's some weird incompatibility with a driver for my video card. I don't enjoy (and I doubt anybody does) having to toggle switches and checkboxes and rolling back drivers just to enjoy a game, old or new.

I realize that computers are complex machines with tons of different parts made by different manufacturers and any number of things could cause an incompatibility issue, but it doesn't mean I'm going to be any less forgiving about it.

Crono wrote:

Link, virtual environments are emulators. There's usually only hardware acceleration available for GPU (chances are the thing ran on CPU only anyway), and even then, it's wrapped into a comparability wrapper between the virtual environment and the actual runtime environment.

Yeah... you lost me once you started talking about wrappers and environments. If you can point me into the right direction I'll look into the virtual environment stuff more.

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Crono

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:25 pm

B-E-N-D-E-R Beeeender

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 12:17 am
Posts: 3016
Location: Oregon, USA

Link wrote:

I realize that computers are complex machines with tons of different parts made by different manufacturers and any number of things could cause an incompatibility issue, but it doesn't mean I'm going to be any less forgiving about it.[/color]

To be honest, even though you're fed this line from developers a lot ... this is not the reason why these things no longer work. The reason why is they get more money by making you buy new platforms, it's as simple as that.

As a result, they constantly create a new foundation that is ALWAYS going to be incompatible with the previous foundations. They do this to such high granularity that there's disparity between freaking service packs and individual libraries. Combine this with hacked on multimedia support for the time, and yeah ... no shit it's not going to work anymore.

It's just ridiculous. This does not happen on other systems. Open systems, for example, (the hardware for x86 is open, Windows is not) have legacy support and build their platforms in such a way that old things will not be broken, and are still supported properly. Especially in terms of software. And, let me tell you, if you think there's a lot of combinations in Windows land ... you haven't seen anything. How can so much software be built for Linux-land and yet work on such varying configurations? It's because they don't actively break their old shit!

To be perfectly honest, you have a better chance at running Grim Fandango in a Linux environment than a Windows one. You might have a better shot getting it to run in Win7 since it's suppose to support virtual environments out of the box.

Here's some things to check out:
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/wwhel ... win95.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/

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gasline09

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:49 pm

I Make Physics Sexy

Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:31 pm
Posts: 2108
Location: Canaduh

Yes, I am aware that you can set up your PC/laptop on a TV but it's still a lot more comfortable and easier (for me anyways) to play video games with a controller when I'm laying down on a sofa or recliner.

If it works out to be cheaper, then that's great! I still choose to play video games on consoles.

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Kaiserhawk

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:50 pm

ATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 7:47 am
Posts: 5056
Location: Inverness, Scotland

From what I understand you also save more money if you're willing to build your own PC (Not all that hard, but I can see why people don't)

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mscupcakes

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:54 pm

Hands Off The Panda!

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 7:48 am
Posts: 5095
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Max wrote:

Yes, I am aware that you can set up your PC/laptop on a TV but it's still a lot more comfortable and easier (for me anyways) to play video games with a controller when I'm laying down on a sofa or recliner.

If it works out to be cheaper, then that's great! I still choose to play video games on consoles.

You can use a controller on pretty much any PC game if you know what you're doing.

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gasline09

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:57 pm

I Make Physics Sexy

Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:31 pm
Posts: 2108
Location: Canaduh

mscupcakes wrote:

Max wrote:

Yes, I am aware that you can set up your PC/laptop on a TV but it's still a lot more comfortable and easier (for me anyways) to play video games with a controller when I'm laying down on a sofa or recliner.

If it works out to be cheaper, then that's great! I still choose to play video games on consoles.

You can use a controller on pretty much any PC game if you know what you're doing.

Cool.

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Crono

Post subject: Re: I fucking hate PC gaming

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:58 pm

B-E-N-D-E-R Beeeender

Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 12:17 am
Posts: 3016
Location: Oregon, USA

I've use a 360, Wii, and PS3 controller on my computer. It's not that complicated to do (Wii controller is actually the easiest to configure, oddly enough)

Kaiserhawk wrote:

From what I understand you also save more money if you're willing to build your own PC (Not all that hard, but I can see why people don't)

Absolutely. Shops and companies charge a premium because that's "how much computers cost" regardless of the parts cost. It's just, really, taking advantage of consumers, more than anything else. I could understand a labor fee, but in most cases it's like $500 more than it costs them to build it. (consider, also, companies like Dell use their own cheap parts and things made specifically for their machines, refurbished or not)

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