I know we get threads about these matters every other week, but I just found this article on PC Gamer concerning DX3: Human Revolution.

Many people have been skeptical as to whether or not the upcoming Deus Ex 3 will be able to hold a candle to the original, especially after what a colossal failure the first sequel proved to be. Indeed, the original Deus Ex is still arguably one of the greatest shooters of all time - and lots of people seem to also associate it with being the paragon of what the PC gaming industry at its finest can achieve. Deep storytelling, varied gameplay, and a campaign that actually takes >10 hours to beat. Absolutely unheard of in today's sea of Battlefield/Call of Duty clones.

And yet, despite Human Revolution being developed by a new team with little/no ties to the original creators, they seem to be making it a point that they want the game to be as comprehensive as possible (in terms of freedom, skill curve and customization) as the original. Yes, that means even the seasoned PC gamers who have been long enough to know not to ask, "there were OTHER Deus Ex games?" will feel loved.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/05/04/eidos-talk-deus-ex-human-revolution-pc-exclusive-features/

I personally find these additional features pretty self-explanatory, but I also laud Eidos' efforts considering that the only other (relatively mainstream) developer I can think of with so much PC-pride is CD Project Red, developers of the Witcher games. So after seeing this, I really am hoping the PC version of Skyrim will have some nice goodies. I'm not even talking about graphics and the UI - but how about allowing us to bind multiple keys to each action, like in older games (GTA3 allowed for three keystrokes per control, I believe)? Faster-reacting menus?

Some of this stuff has been confirmed or at least acknowledged as a possibility by Pete Hines via Twitter. But I'd just like to remind everyone that there's more to making a PC port than making the fonts smaller. My machine isn't even DirectX 11 compatible. I just would love to see these other sorts of things taken into consideration. Share your sentiments here. Please, no platform wars - this isn't about that!

Deus ex is a good example indeed. Besides, the community managed to convince the developers to make the yellow highlight on interactable objects optional! They saw the demo, they made a huge complaint thread in the official forums about that useless yellow babysitting crap and SURPRISE! they were listened to, which is really impressive.

Bethesda doesn't care. A large part of their audience with their games is on PC, so they don't have to cater to it at all. They just claim 90% isn't and shove out a console port with an editor. That's all they have to do.

I wouldn't take it that far. But the biggest difference in thought processes I see between developers is this:

Eidos Montreal: "Gee, this interface would be totally awkward on the PC. Let's redesign parts of it."
Bethesda: "Gee, let's lampshade how we can't make a more accessible and efficient icon/list inventory display for the PC users. Like, guys, did you see those DETAILED 3D RENDERINGS OF EVERY ITEM? We CAN'T go back!"

This is a generalization, of course. We still haven't seen any aspect of Skyrim's interface other than the skills foldout. It'd be nice if they were to give us some specifics or send some screenshots our way of the PC interface before release day, however. So I can start planning the TES V equivalent of the DarNified UI in advance.

Well at last we can hope thats UI still editable but enhanced with some new features, if devs will not well implement support of PC features, I was really enjoyed by DarNified UI with additional mods, but I think devs will not repeat their old mistakes again, at last I hope on this.

I really hope the UI will be the best yet. But I have my concerns based on the little we know and past games.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1183102-user-interface-on-pc/

There were other deus ex games? No, no, "games" implies multiple - there was only one other deus ex game, the original. Nothing else.

I liked Invisible Wars


On the topic, that would explain why the release date of Deus Ex 3 has been changed...

1; Invisible War wasn't terrible. It wasn't a worthy successor by any means, but it wasn't abjectly terrible. Then again, I played IW first, so maybe I'm in bad position to talk. Rather than moving forwards through time and being disappointed, and went backwards and was delighted by the improvements.

2. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure BGS is committed to providing an identical experience across their three platforms, which of course means that the limitations of the 360 are the lowest common denominator we all have to suffer from. Aside from maybe a Hi-Res pack, and of course the ability to mod, I don't anticipate any concessions to the PC community.

From the GI Podcast Q&A which was transcribed by member Vamphaery :
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/podcasts/archive/2011/02/03/toddhowardse.aspx

That was good to hear - my main concern with the UI is that I think the full screen skills/map foldout is kind of unnecessary. Yes, I know that you guys over at Bethesda probably slaved over those constellation paintings for weeks, perfecting them. They're really nice. And yet, it'd be nice if it were just a popup or cropped away to a portion of the screen, that way I won't have spent so much time gawking at them that I'd forgotten the whole reason I pulled up the menu in the first place: to grab that Restore Health potion before that troll smashes my skull in 0.2 seconds after I close the menu in confusion.

I was under the impression that the new Deus Ex is a multiplatform game. What does all this "PC love" mean for those of us not getting the PC version? By that, I mean are they actually making the game all it can be on PS3s and 360s but making crucial adjusments for the PC version or will this be a case of a crappy PC port? The other company you mentioned loves PCs so much that consoles don't get their games, so... what's going on with the company creating Deux Ex: Human Revolution?

I have put more hours into Battlefield than any other game - and I really like TES. Battlefield (not Bad company) has no story. Is is pure multiplayer. They cannot be compared to tes. And BF3 is PC FIRST then consoles second.

I must be one of the few PC gamers who would much prefer a full screen map over either Morrowind's resizeable window map or Oblivion's tiny map. If I want to see the entire game world, I want to be able to push a single key and have the map come up in full screen. I want to make use of all 1920x1200 pixels on my screen, and I don't want to have to resize a window to do that.

StoneFrog, the sea of clones are Gears of War hell-spawn. Remember, it was so visceral.

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/BFeld13/wading-through-the-diction-video-games-marketing-and-you-74121.phtml

I read that and I see first that it will have higher texture resolutions. That was always a given. Other than that I just see vague assurances and promises, with no actually information or anything concrete.

I am VERY VERY impressed with what they are doing in the DX3 PC UI. And thats right after they made the yellow-highliting optional after PC gamers complained


Let us hope Bethesda does this kind of PC treatment, i mean aren't they way more funded than Eidos?

Agreed.

My concern is that Todd always mentions hi res textures in the context of "We always provide hi res textures for all our games."

:flamethrower: :flamed: Well that may be the case but they were not hi res enough! Oblivion, FO3, FNV (yes I know this is Obsidian) all required mods with hi res texture packs for anyone who wanted the game to look halfway decent at 1920x1080 or better.

There are a lot of problems with Dragon Age 2, but the Official high res texture pack released by Bioware was almost on the level of some excellent modder-created hi res texture packs and at the same time it barely reduced frame rates or load times at all.

The hi res texture packs for Oblivion created by modders reduce my load times to a crawl and reduce frame rate as well.

I'm hoping that Bethesda will release an official high res texture pack for Skyrim that is optimized by the pros at Bethesda in a similar way so it doesn't hurt load times or frame rates.

Yeah, I can see and agree with that concern. I've definitely had to download modder made textures to get the game looking better and my resolution isn't even that high. It just makes the world so much more crisp and detail.

I'd really like Todd to stop dancing around the questions about the PC version and give some solid info on it for once.

Hopefully at E3. But I'm not holding my breath.

As a texture designer myself, I tend to use working resolutions of at least 2048x2048. People could call it excessive but it does help to have all of those smaller details "compartmentalized" so you can rework them or tone them down when it's time to make things like normal maps without everything becoming a noisy mess.

The problem with Oblivion's textures is that they seem to have just been one mipmap level above the 360 release. No real prioritization. Alright, so we have 1024x1024 grass now, but stepping up that 128x128 wooden frame to 256x256 just kind of clashes with everything else - and I'm assuming the artists would have an original copy at least one resolution above that on hand. I personally can't blame them because TES games have so many textures that it would be hell to resize them in any way other than procedurally, but you can see a nice example of the ideal with http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6446, a special repackaging of the textures for users who wish to use a lower resolution but realize certain things may be deserving of having more or less quality preserved for a performance tradeoff.

Basically, it'd be cool if Bethesda were to just release higher resolution textures on an extra DVD, or as a download from their website. Of course with today's slew of legal complications, that may be harder than we think.

Very informative post - yes, 2048 x 2048 seemed to be the modded texture versions I installed for Oblivion and they looked gorgeous. IIRC, there are also 4096x4096 texture mods available for Oblivion.



Bioware didn't seem to be deterred by any such issues, and the end result of the official Bioware DA2 texture pack was excellent, without noticeably impacting frame rate or load times.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/05/05/deus-ex-human-revolution-will-support-directx11-3d-and-amd-eyefinity/

Here is the follow up from the original article in the OP. Dues ex will support eyefinity, 3d gaming, dx11 with tessellation ect

The most interesting quote in this article is that they rewrote some of the engine for pc, to utilize multi core systems. As an example a user with dual core CPU can see up to a 70% performance gain. Now I'm sure 70% is cream of the crop dual core CPUs, but I find that impressive to say the least.

Eidos Montreal doesn't really love the PC that much. They develop the game for the 360/PS3 and then let http://www.nixxes.com/nixxes/ to do the PC port (which Nixxes seem to do rather well if the first impressions are anything to go by). So the PC version isn't something Eidos Montreal bother themselves with