Comments on: Bioshockshock

By: Krupo

Krupo — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 04:22:49 +0000

I actually got the experience Janek pines for – and running a wimpy cheap 7300GS in Vista 64-bit.

Take2 exploited the fact that this is a can’t-miss game to the max: otherwise I would’ve left the box behind in the store.

But this is a game of such a huge … ‘experience’, it’d be wrong to miss it, no matter what flaming turd obstacle is thrown in my direction.

Speaking of flaming obstacles, I’m going back into the game to use my telekinesis powers some more. What fun!

(My hope now, is that the game is stabilized by the time I get around to upgrading to an 8800 so I won’t risk ‘breaking’ it…)

By: Martin Coxall

Martin Coxall — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:57:41 +0000

“Bioshock will be returned for a refund as soon as it shows up.”

Uh-huh.

By: yupp

yupp — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:25:53 +0000

This activation shit has got to go. Bioshock will be returned for a refund as soon as it shows up. Why don’t they publish their hairbrained ideas before people have the chance to pre-order?
The joy of doing the right thing is the bitter taste of publisher dick in your mouth…

By: Janek

Janek — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 02:35:06 +0000

Oh for the days when you could just install and then play.

Arbitary barriers inconveniencing legitimate users are never a good thing, to be honest. And nefarious types will find a way around it, so I don’t know why they bother.

By: Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:26:41 +0000

Re: The activation. I think the way it works is that you can only have two installs activated at once but you can deactivate by running the uninstaller. If you just wipe over an install or format your drive then that’s the activation gone and you’ll have to call Take 2 (Or just download the bloody crack).

So not quite as bad as it seems at first, but still potentially annoying.

By: XsV

XsV — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 23:56:55 +0000

It’s sad to hear that some people are having problems. Perhaps it is with the Nvidia drivers or DX10. I’ve got to say my machine is pretty old (AMD3500, 2gig ram, X1950pro on AGP)and the demo runs at max settings like a steroid induced bunny with an RPG up its arse, and not a single glitch either.

I was hoping for poor performance so that I’d have an excuse to build a new system, but, sadly (or not) every thing’s fine!

Just blame Micro$haft instead. :)

By: Martin Coxall

Martin Coxall — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:23:40 +0000

Since you were all likely to lose sleep over this, I suppose I should give you some kind of update.

I got the demo working.

I know, I know.

The way was to download the August Beta NVIDIA drivers and the August DX10 SDK. Apparently *only* this combination in any meaningful (i.e. non-crashful) sense supports DirectX 10 SLI.

I suppose I can’t blame 2KB/A for that. THIS TIME.

I shall now try the FOV-fiddler tool.

By: Solario

Solario — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:26:26 +0000

Of course if you’re running Vista and own a GeForce 7 of any kind, then you’re probably better off waiting for the “real” patch and not the Beta patch, seeing as I just had to reformat my computer because I got weird stripes of colorful death whenever I tried to start up a game of any kind.

And the demo has only frozen on me once, when I entered the map and I could hear the game still kept going.

By: John P

John P — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:46:24 +0000

Well, the demo took a lot of fiddling. At first, loads of the textures were missing from various places. Which was odd. Then it crashed when I started the hacking game. On the next couple of runs through it crashed every time I was about to get into Rapture proper.

So what I did was a) reinstall those beta nvidia drivers (only this time I downloaded the US version not the UK, if that’s relevant, which I doubt) b) reinstall direct x 9.0c. One of those must have done trick, cuz it only crashed once since I did all that, and that when switching from keyboard to 360 pad then fiddling with some graphics, so i’m hoping it was just my pc being shit.

Other than that, considering how ancient my PC is it runs like a dream – I hope the full release works out of the box after installing all that crap. For the record I have a 7800 GTS, 1gb RAM, Athlon 4.0 single core thingy on XP.

By: Feet

Feet — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:34:56 +0000

The widescreen problem has already been fixed.

http://forum.preys-world.com/viewtopic.php?p=669171#669171

By: arqueturus

arqueturus — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:31:22 +0000

I’ve got the Nvidia beta drivers and WinXp. Absolutely no issue in the demo other than shonky sound if EAX was turned on (I have a creative card) , turned it off and it still sounds mint anyway.

Fingers crossed I have equal success with the full version.

cheers arq

By: Alec Meer

Alec Meer — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:02:17 +0000

“What seems to be happening is that if you have Vista and an NVIDIA 8800 family GPU, the only way you’re getting this bitch to run is with the latest NVIDIA beta drivers and the August DX10 redistributable.”

I have both of the former and neither of the latter, and I just had that one crash in the demo. Fine, otherwise. While I’m usually obsessive-compulsive about such things, I’m currently reticent to update my NVIDIA driver in case it causes problems.

The problem with the widescreen is the field of view rather than missing pixels. A 16:10 or 16:9 monitor should allow a kind peripheral vision – the point of widescreen, essentially. It’s not a major problem unless you’re an image junkie, but if it was working you’d feel more ‘inside’ Rapture, have more bits of ocean either side of you, see an enemy appearing from the right sooner, that sort of thing. It’s not so much what’s cropped out as what’s not added that should be. Especially as there’s no earthly reason for it not to be, apart from forgetting or not bothering.