Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You
Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman has made a name for himself fixing publishers’ shoddy PC versions of popular games. Photo courtesy Peter Thoman
When Rising Star Games released Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut for the PC last month, the port of the Twin Peaks-esque cult favorite horror game had some serious issues. Chief among them was the fact that the game’s resolution was, highly atypically for a PC game, locked to 720p.
The outcry was immediate and vocal.
“Face palm through my skull,” said one poster on the NeoGAF message board. “Damnit,” said another.
But in spite of their outrage, many users expressed hope for a savior to come to their aid. “You on it, Durante?” asked one user. Like a Batsignal, the call was out.
The answer came less than an hour later. “I should be able to fix this.”
The post came from Peter Thoman, better known by the handle Durante. A 29-year-old from Austria with a Ph.D. in computer science, Thoman first gained online notoriety in 2012 when he fixed a similar resolution issue with Namco Bandai’s PC port of its role-playing game Dark Souls. With Deadly Premonition’s PC version looking like a similar hackjob, players hoped Durante would do what the game’s publisher would not.
Sure enough, within 24 hours of the game’s release on Steam, Thoman had uploaded “DPfix 0.1 alpha,” a patch that allowed Deadly Premonition players to manually adjust the game’s resolution. Thoman tells WIRED that his process involves intercepting and logging the graphic rendering calls between the game and DirectX, then locating and adjusting the resolution buffer. In layman’s terms, he reverse-engineers from the graphical output, rather than the game’s source code, a way to adjust the resolution, wrapping up the fix into a convenient zip file.
“My primary motivation,” Thoman said, “is because I don’t like playing games at low resolution.”
When the news of Dark Souls’ locked resolution first came out, Thoman said he was incredulous. “I posted on GAF multiple times about how I couldn’t believe that the game will be resolution locked, how silly that would be and how it must be a translation error,” he said later in a NeoGAF post. “When I was proven wrong about that, and some people made up long reasons for why such a lock could be in place, I was irked. Someone was wrong on the internet, and it fell to me to set them straight.”
Thoman’s patches proved his point: There was nothing that required the games to be locked to a low resolution. But Thoman didn’t stop there. Since the original Premonition patch had broken a few things, he worked on fixing them. Then he started including options for adding anti-aliasing and increasing the rendering resolution of reflections, something he says improves the quality of the game’s depth-of-field effects.
“I also added the option to replace textures,” he said, “which allows other modders to make really interesting stuff, like high-resolution texture packs or other user-interface modifications. I always really like letting people do that.”
Rising Star Games’ Deadly Premonition ran at a low resolution on PC (as in the mirror at left), but displays well with Durante’s fix (right). Image: Peter Thoman
Thoman estimates he spent more than 70 hours patching the game in the two weeks following its release. The most recent DPfix release fixed pixel offset errors that occurred at higher resolutions, fixed anti-aliasing when it was not being correctly applied, added improved depth-of-field effects, and added an option for screen space ambient occlusion.
But if Thoman was able to crank out a fix so quickly, why hasn’t Rising Star created an official patch yet?
Hidetaka “Swery65″ Suehiro, the game’s director, tweeted an acknowledgement of the issues shortly after launch. Rising Star Games noted that a patch is on the way, but that adding in support for gamepad controllers (another major omission) would be its first priority.
(Rising Star declined to comment on this story.)
Thoman says the difference between his fixes and official patches are primarily an issue of quality assurance. “When I write and program something, I make sure I didn’t make any obvious errors, and then I just release it,” Thoman told WIRED. “If it works for 90 percent of people, I already consider that a success.”
From there, Thoman starts working for that other 10 percent, but he says that there’s probably one percent of people that he will never be able to help. If he were in charge of a commercial product rather than a fan-made patch, he’d have a responsibility to make sure whatever he released worked for everyone and didn’t break anything.
Still, it makes you wonder why companies would release such slapdash products in the first place. Thoman says that in his opinion, Dark Souls and Deadly Premonition weren’t really broken — they just went from game consoles to the PC without any enhancements. PC games don’t sell very well in Japan, he says, so when it comes time for a Japanese company to port a game to PC, they often underestimate what PC gamers expect in the way of features.
The community clearly appreciates Durante’s efforts. “Deadly Premonition will soon be the best example of how a community can help improve the quality of a game,” said one NeoGAF user.
Another GAF user even suggested he sell his services in the future to a Japanese company planning to port a game to PC. But while Thoman says he is intrigued by the ability to work with a game’s source code rather than having to reverse-engineer a solution, he’s happy in his day job as a university post-doc and isn’t terribly interested in the logistics of making something like that happen. For him, fixing companies’ crappy PC ports will stay a hobby.
“I do this for fun,” he said. “The more you do it as work, the less it will seem like fun.”
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/11/deadly-premonition-pc-durante/
Such a sexy beast
ESEA fined $325,000 over bitcoin farming, user monitoring
US eSports organisation ESEA has agreed to a $1 million settlement over malware hidden in its client by a couple of rogue employees.
Spacebase DF-9 recouped Indie Fund investment in just two weeks
Double Fine’s Spacebase DF-9 was funded by the largest Indie Fund grant to date, but made up that investment in just two weeks.
State of Decay Breakdown DLC gameplay footage surfaces
State of Decay’s new expansion, Breakdown, has less story and tougher gameplay; this fresh gameplay footage shows off the new content in action.
Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW! launch trailer released
Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW! has a launch trailer available below, in which you can get an idea of what to expect from the Finn and Jake game. The WayForward Technologies title hit North America on 3DS, PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U today, and released in Europe on November 15.
Elder Scrolls Online – more beta keys are hitting inboxes, says ZeniMax Online
Elder Scrolls Online beta keys are hitting inboxes, according to ZemiMax Online. The firm confirmed in a blog post today that more have been sent out, so you may wish to check your email in case it slipped past your eyes. More invitations to the ESO beta test are going out soon, so if perchance, like us, you didn’t receive an invite, just be patient. In the meantime, read up on things such as lock-picking, kill-stealing and more through a previous post from this morning. The MMO hits PC, PS4 and Xbox One in 2014
Black Mesa will be available on Steam soon for a “relatively low price”
Black Mesa will be available on Steam soon for a “relatively low price,” according to the developers.
League of Legends Season 3 World Championship had over over 32 million viewers
Riot has announced that over 32 million people watched the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship finals in October.
The Walking Dead: Game of the Year Edition now available at retailers across North America
The Walking Dead:Game of the Year Edition is now available for purchase at retailers across North America for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. It will run you $29.99.
Future Assassin’s Creed games could include “shared open-world” due to Watch Dogs “showing the way”
Ubisoft feels the future of next-gen gaming offers the ability to share open-world games with other players, and according to Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag’s lead game designer Jean-Sebastien Decant, Watch Dogs is “showing the way.”
The Mandate stars Harry Potter and Game of Thrones’ David Bradley
Perihelion Interactive has announced should The Mandate, its Tsarist space opera-RPG, meet it’s goal on Kickstarter David Bradley will provide the voice for Lord High Admiral Suvarov.
Command & Conquer development to resume under new studio, says EA
Command & Conquer’s free-to-play reboot may have been labelled as cancelled, but it seems that EA is looking for a new studio to salvage the project.
Rezzed 2014 tickets on sale now as Eurogamer Expo re-branded as EGX London
Rezzed and Eurogamer Expo 2014 will now fall under a new banner of events known as EGX, organiser Gamer Network has revealed. It comes as tickets for PC and indie show Rezzed go on sale. Find out how you can grab yours now.
Valve will showcase its virtual reality tech in January
Valve has confirmed it will showcase its prototype VR tech during its Steam Dev Days event in Seattle, January 15-16.
Elder Scrolls Online blog details lock-picking, kill-stealing & more
The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios has posted a new blog that runs down several game mechanics, such as lock-picking, XP sharing, character names and more.
Valve’s Steam Dev Days: first speakers announced, press still not invited
Valve has announced the first round of guest speakers for its Steam Dev Days event, which aims to bring the development community together without the press looming over them like some intrusive specter.
Shadowrun Dragonfall: Berlin expansion dated & named, first details revealed
Shadowrun: Dragonfall is the official expansion to Shadowrun Returns. Developer Harebrained Schemes has lifted the lid off the new content in Kickstarter post. Find out what the deal is here.
The Shivah: Wadjet Eye’s adventure title being re-released this week
The Shivah developer Wadjet Eye is re-releasing its 2006 adventure game as a new Kosher Edition on Steam, PC direct download and iOS. It’s out this week.
Blizzard want World of Warcraft expansions to become an annual occurrence
Comment
As Blizzard are likely reminded whenever they forget not to read news stories like this one, World of Warcraft’s subscriber base is falling. Not like a stone, but a spinning jenny. Gracefully, but steadily.
Even so, more of their staff are being sent to Azeroth’s coalface than ever before, and fewer returning to work on other projects. So what fearsome workflow paradox is gobbling up some of PC gaming’s most talented developers?
The nebulous, ever-changing Next Expansion, it turns out.
Wasteland, want not: After Reset aims to be the best of Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment
Comments1
Some PC gamers are still upset that Fallout 3 was never made. Not that one, with the VATS and the teddy-guns: the one codenamed Van Buren, in construction at Black Isle before it went bust a decade ago. I know they’re still upset, because I sometimes frequent those kind of forums.
So grumpy were one gaggle of budding developers, in fact, that they named their outfit Black Cloud Studios and set to work on After Reset - an ambitious RPG for PC, Mac and Linux, founded on design principles established in Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment and the original Fallout games.
Brine and brevity: Ken Levine defends BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1
Comment
Brevity is beauty, said somebody once. Not Ken Levine. Though he did say a similar thing about BioShock Infinite’s rather brief Burial at Sea DLC - only in more words, ironically enough.
“I'm very respective of people's time and money,” he said.
Riot want to improve communication with League of Legends PBE testers
Comment
Game developers are fond of telling us that they’re ‘listening to our feedback’ - but that’s merely the impersonal baseline of accepting suggestions from fans; the ‘thanks for all my birthday wishes’ of community relations; the queen’s wave of beta testing.
Riot would like to do better. This weekend, for instance, they would have liked to tell fans that they were handling a nasty bug before the distraught forum threads began to pop up.
How A Single Patch Can Shake The Dota 2 Trading Market
By Cassandra Khaw on November 19th, 2013 at 7:00 pm.
“Do you want a scoop?”
“Yes.” That didn’t seem sufficient. An emoticon — X and D get a lot of mileage from me — gets stapled on. “Yes, I do.”
Jing is my primary contact in the sometimes seedy world of Dota 2 trading. He’s an administrator at Dota2traders, a straight-laced gent with an encyclopedic knowledge of market prices. Which is invaluable in his field, really, because couriers in Valve’s re-imagining of the world’s most popular mod can fetch prices upwards of $10,000 dollars.
We start with the pleasantries. You know Dota 2 is getting a new patch? Yes. You know the thing about socketing and crafting? Yes. Well, traders are mad about it. Why? Because there’s a chance we’ve all just lost thousands and thousands of dollars. Amid my growing consternation, Jing goes on to provide an account of how one simple update could be held culpable for such staggering financial damage.
Read the rest of this entry »
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – Incoming Patch Will Add PhysX Effects
Nvidia has announced that an incoming patch will add some new PhysX effects in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. According to the green team, this patch will introduce APEX Particles that are manipulated by external forces such as gravity, wind, character movement, and explosions, courtesy of the APEX Turbulence system. Continue reading
Wargame Red Dragon Announced, First Screenshots Unveiled
Focus Home Interactive announced today Wargame Red Dragon, the latest title in the spectacular real time strategy game series created by developers Eugen Systems, and has released its first screenshots. Continue reading
@TheVoxelman on twitter
