Less a manifesto, and more a notverymanlyfesto, as this is very much a tech-centric list. If you want thoughtful game theory, you’ve got the wrong nitpicker.
The PC is the best gaming platform in the world – but it could be better still. While it’s great that the PC doesn’t have to suffer quite the same degree of standardisation as its locked-down console brethren, we have nevertheless fallen into certain patterns of how we game. There are things we take for granted and thus expect, like WASD controls in FPSes and patches for bad bugs. There are others still we should be able to take for granted, but can’t because the same damn-fool oversights happen again and again. Even outside of the more obvious annoyances like referring to Xbox controls or including ridiculously draconian DRM (which are both more a question of money than of thoughtlessness), a ton of stuff that any gamer could have told the developer was a glaring screw-up keeps on turning up in otherwise great games. Here are just 10 of the worst offenders, 10 things that every single modern PC game should get right and has no excuse not to. Please do suggest others in comments below.
1. Alt-tab support.
Perhaps the single greatest, but so often neglected, Must-have there is. Just having rudimentary task-switching support in there isn’t enough (hello-o Valve games) – it needs to be fairly quickly and smooth, and included in the original release of the game, not in a patch down the line. This should be as big a priority as graphics or sound. Don’t care if it’s a massive pain to code in. Don’t care if you have to re-start the entire game from scratch to put it in. Alt-tab is absolutely integral to the way we all use our PCs. Half of us essentially live at our computers – we need to be able to task-switch to an IM window or an inbox or even another game in moments, not be locked into one program. Frankly – if your game doesn’t alt-tab, it’s not really a PC game.
Possibly deserving an entry of its own, but in the name of keeping this list to 10 I’ll include it here – all PC games should be able to play in a window. I’ve missed social events because someone’s instant messaged me about going to the pub, but not bothered to phone or text when I don’t get back to them right away because I’m off in a game. One day, the girl of my dreams will magically message me, and by the time I’ve exited the game she’ll have got bored of waiting and declared her love for my arch-nemesis (I don’t actually have an arch-nemesis, but I’m working on it). Then I will hunt down and kill the developer of whichever unwindowable game I was playing at the time. They will appreciate why. Window play is also necessary for 2D games whose resolutions can’t be changed – 800×600 pixels of pretty hand-drawn art look like roadkill in toontown when they’re stretched over a 1680×1050 panel.
2. Use standardised install and savegame folders
Everything goes in Program Files by default, please (and, just as importantly, there needs to be an option to install anywhere the player would rather). Don’t have your game install itself into the root of C:\ or an obscure sub-folder, and when you do put it in Program Files don’t stick it inside [Publisher name]\[Developer name] – just stick a folder directly in there under the game’s name. Gamers want to be able to find their game files easily, not have to Google for everyone involved in its creation just so they can work out what folder it’s in.
This is doubly true of savegames. We need to be able to back those suckers up in case of disaster or a Windows reinstall. Know where STALKER hides its savegames in Vista? C:\Users\all users\documents\stalker-shoc, that’s where. Here’s where games whose developers aren’t crazy stick their saves on my PC – C:\Users\Alec\Documents\My Games. In other words, the standard My Games folder inside (My) Documents, a two-click, standard process to reach. To find STALKER’s saves, I have to dig through five separate sub-folders, in something I’d never otherwise look at. Who are these mythical ‘All Users’? They’re not me, that’s who.
Even our beloved World of Goo fails at this. The game goes into Program Files\World of Goo. The savegame – and the savegame alone – goes into C:\ProgramData\2DBoy\WorldOfGoo. ProgramData? Worse, that’s actually a hidden folder by default. Gah!
3. Automatically set themselves to your desktop screen resolution
Don’t default to something horrid and archaic like 640×480. The vast majority of PC gamers use flatpanel monitors, and games running at anything other than their native resolution tend to look horrible. Save us the hassle of changing the setting ourselves, but most of all save the less tech-savvy from having to work out what a resolution even is in the first place, or just putting up with a blurry screen because they’ve no idea how to fix it. Clearly, still allow the resolution to be easily changed to whatever the gamer wants, however: the game needs to support every res the monitor does.
4. Support widescreen resolutions.
Widescreen isn’t the future – it’s the present. Just look at the consoles for proof of that, or at the top hits for ‘monitor’ on Amazon. And expecting us to edit an ini file or type in command lines doesn’t count as widescreen support.
5. Uninstall in seconds.
Don’t have it laboriously check every single damn file before it has the grace to remove ‘em – just wipe the folder, pull the main hooks out of the registry and be done with it. I uninstalled the FIFA 09 demo today, and it all but locked up my PC for ten minutes while it did its ridiculous, disc-churning thing. Then I uninstalled the King’s Bounty: The Legend demo, and it was gone in the blink of an eye. That’s the way to do it. When I want someone to leave my house, I just want them gone – I don’t want them hanging around on the doorstep making tedious chit-chat for half an hour. Tied into this is installing neatly in the first place to ensure removal is simple – the game should all end up in one place, not explode tiny bits of itself all over the hard drive.
6. Don’t require the CD/DVD in the drive to play.
Again, we’re talking about a PC, a device with hundreds of gigabytes of storage. A game needing to look at a plastic disc entirely external to the game install folder whenever it runs is openly ludicrous. I know it’s for copy protection’s sake (and even so is of debatable effectiveness in this day and age), but the annoyance to legit customers surely outweighs a few extra lost sales before the inevitable no CD crack turns up anyway. Requiring PC gamers to scrabble through a vast pile of discs just to play the game they’ve already installed is contrary to the nature of the platform, and lures people towards less than legal solutions that may ultimately push them further towards piracy. And you wouldn’t want that, would you publishers?
7. Keep the quicksave and quickload keys far apart.
Accidents happen, whether it’s sausage-fingered gamer stereotypes or just furious keyboard-slapping in rage at another defeat. Hitting quicksave when you’re reaching for quickload is the worst thing in the world, including being licked to death by a pack of hobos. If you set quicksave and quickload to F5 and F6, you are not fit to be developing PC games. F6 and F9 are fine – that’s enough space to blame quicksaving just as you get killed on the player being stupid, not on developer thoughtlessness.
8. Escape means menu/pause
The button’s actually called ‘Escape’, for heaven’s sake. Why on Earth would a game ever bind a request to leave or pause the action to anything else? This needs to be standardised. No-one wants to be miserably jabbing at random buttons one-by-one because the phone’s ringing but they’ve got no idea what brings up the pause menu.
And, because I want to keep this list PC-centric rather than generalist to all games, I’ll mention cutscenes here rather than as a separate point. Pressing Escape during a cinematic means I want to end that cinematic. Literally, I want to escape this movie you are making me watch. Please respect that button’s purpose. Please respect your players – and if you make any of your cutscenes unskippable, you don’t.
9. Auto-backup quicksaves
Again, accidents happen. Excited gamers hit quicksave when they think they’re out of danger but a giganto-beast is just about to feast on their ankles. Files get corrupted. And then you’re screwed, with no option than to rewind potentially hours of progress. So whenever the player hits quicksave, the game should keep a copy of the last one in case of disaster. The last two, ideally. It’s just common sense, and surely an incredibly simple process.
10. Patches should fix, not break
If your patch renders savegames from previous versions of the game inoperable, it’s just not ready for release. If people have to restart a game from the very beginning because of this, they will hate and distrust you for it. If there’s honestly no way around this, because the under-the-hood changes really are that absolute, then the patch needs to say as much in giant red letters when it’s run: “INSTALLING THIS WILL BREAK YOUR SAVES. OK?” A footnote in the readme file is not enough. Better yet, the lead designer should show up at the door of anyone installing the patch with a box of chocolates and an apologetic hug.
Stepping away from savegames, if your patch introduces new problems then it’s hardly a patch, is it? Test it to death before you let it into the wild – remember that Eve update which deleted critical Windows files? Such a thing cannot be allowed to ever happen again.
Related Stories:
Oh, another.
Don’t assume I want your ‘latest’ version of DirectX installed along with the game, as:
a) It’s quite easy to check whether I have a high enough version of DirectX to run your game;
b) Once your version is on a CD it ain’t keeping up with the times.
(Thanks to Sid Meier’s Gettysberg for the reminder there. No I don’t want to install the ‘latest’ DirectX 5, ta very much).
Not installing DirectX updates is even worse than not installing driver updates (e.g. hard software crashes, unsupported features). It’s not as simple as looking at the major release number – the monthly updates exist for a reason!
(Also, I’m pretty sure that Windows won’t let you install older versions over newer.)
Are you sure about that? The AppData folder isn’t under documents, and neither are Pictures, Videos, Desktop…
Good list. With regards to the problem of having to skip logos and intros AvP2 did it right with the game launcher providing a tick box selection of being able to skip all the intro crap…. plus they allowed you to change the resolution and other graphics settings without entering the game…. i.e.:
No. 12 on the list: Do not require a restart just to change the graphics settings! Or allow these settings to be changed outside the game.
I have one to add: Let me name my save games what I want. I’m looking at you Oblivion and other abominations. I want to be able to save a game at an important point and name it appropriately so I know which one it is when I want to go back to the important point. I don’t want to have to load every single save game to find it was called “Save game 376″.
Have an option to invert the mouse
If you don’t let me invert the mouse, I can’t play your game. I just spend the whole time looking at the floor, or the ceiling. Most first-person games do this now, but there are some annoying exceptions.
Sounds like Half Life 2 and the Source Engine won!
Seriously? I would have thought the opposite…inverting the mouse is almost as ancient as using the arrow keys to look around. Might be better to spend a few evenings adjusting to the norm.
@cliffski
Nice to have a developer’s insight on the whole home save game issue. I always wondered what was going on there. So essentially Microsoft dropped the ball and left it up for everyone else to figure it out. That is really bad. How do they let this go with their whole Games for Windows campaign?
The application data directory might be the way to go, but looking at how application developers spreads out their files all over the user’s home directory, I wouldn’t be surprised if their was no hard standard even for general application development.
Also can you access My Documents programmatically, or do you have to hard code the path?
The best example of the developers ignoring the ability to pause the games is Bloodlines.
Since it runs on Source (albeit a crappy beta version of Source), you can enable the console, and bind the ‘Pause’ command to any key to want, but there’s no way to do it through the menus. Did they not think it was worth including in the UI?
Nice list!
haven’t read all the comments, sorry if this has already been said.
Automatically check for updates. If you have to patch, don’t make the user go Googling to find whichever registration-required site has the latest patch (and a queue system to make you wait for it). Most of the apps on my PC check for updates as soon as they run, and I’m grateful for it (so long as they don’t break the PC or the program etc). If you have to patch, serve it to your customer easily.
No one have mentioned the damn annoying windows support when you click the shift or the alt key several times and windows ask wether it should turn on the help… it is SO frustrating.. and it should not be allowed to conflict in a game.. If you have an lesser computer it wil take ages before getting in to Crysis or assasins creed for exampel…
Two additionals:
Tray to play, motherfucker. Tray to play.
and
Pause during cutscene. “For fifteen long levels you have thought me your friend, player – but now, as you hang by fingertips at the edge of this cliff, it has come time for me to reveal that I am in fact–” “Hey, I’m making noodles. Are you in?” “–and the author of this–” “Hey, hey, noodleboy. Are you in?” “–with a pigeon. MUAHAHAHAHARRR!” “Hey, you’re a bit pale there. You okay?”
‘Amen’ to bloody well everything said in the article and the comments.
Fully rebindable controls – a la HL2 etc. – are just about standard on PC, but believe me, I can count on the fingers of a horse how many console games let you do this. Valve do, and this is WONDERFUL and AMAZING and PERFECT, because reloading on the bumper is now virtually standard, but there are any number of games where a particular manouvre requires an ungodly finger-breaking twist to execute because it was ported from another console with a different controller. Why even have presets when you could have full remapping?
Much more on-topic, alt-tab I never found terribly useful. My computer was never good enough to run games in addition to another program, let alone run them at 1680×1050 (hahahahah good one), but then *shrugs* I always tweak the vid settings and never use alt-tab so it doesn’t affect me.
Aren’t known or obvious pre-release bugs, glitches and inconsistences more irritating then all ten of these, though? Alongside hardware support and expense it’s one of the things that dissuaded me from continuing with PC games, and something that’s more falling standards than a Crazy New Idea….
Alex, more likely it was left out due to a lack of time. Activision forced them to release before it was finished.
some other, perhaps more important additions:
- INCLUDE ADVANCED VIDEO OPTIONS. So many shoddy console to PC ports think less options somehow makes things easier and only provides “smoke ON/OFF shadows ON/OFF” and somehow they come to the conclution that this is adequate. No, sorry, in an ideal world I want to be able to start at Very High settings and strip away features until it’s like I’m playing Another World, and every iteration in between. Or at the least give me Shadows: off/low/med/high
-Allow me to bind EVERY KEY to ANYTHING
Sorry, random game, I don’t think your choice of binding F1 to quicksave is brilliant. Let me change it. Hell, let me change it to Scroll Lock or the instant-calculator button if I want to.
and to be perfectly honest I’d prefer saves to be in “c:\program files\Jet Set Willy 3D\saves\”
Nick: In a “proper” OS, you should only be logged in as an admin when installing programs. This would give you write permission for the game folder. For normal use you should be logged in as a user, with restricted permissions, and hence you wouldn’t have access to program folders.
Pay attention to my mouse settings!
I’m left-handed, and have the buttons switched on my mouse in my Windows settings. Half-Life 2 pays attention to this, so selecting stuff in the menus is natural. BioShock does not, so I’m forever exiting a screen when I meant to select something because I pressed the wrong mouse button. This is particularly annoying in the hack screen where right mouse button activates “speed up flow”.
Oh, speaking of the mouse, when you’re porting a game from the consoles make sure the mouse movement works and allow us to turn mouse smoothing off because it’s crap
ive just started timeshift and the damn thing slides all over the place because they actually put an acceleration curve on it!
Screw your auto-backup quicksaves. That’s how sissies play video games! Back in the day you’d play straight through!
So right, almost all of them. Except the My Games thing under My Documents. What idiot at Microsoft decided to put My Games data into my My Documents folder?. My Documents is for… my documents, for fuck’s sake!!!!!
Games should keep their saves and config inside their own folder, in easily marked and discernible dirs, like, you know “savegames” and “settings”. Whenever I have to go search for the Company of Heroes or Trackmania profiles, I dedicate some words to the mothers of the programmers. They should learn from Blizzard. And Relic should drop the shitty SecuROM protection in OF, but that’s another story.
I would add a couple of things:
- First, a way to disable the intros, I’m tired of seeing the nVidia logo, the publisher logo, the developer logo, the pizza boy logo, etc. Once is enough. Specially if they don’t let you escape and I end up having to replace the .bik files with empty ones.
- Second: every single/multi hybrid game should have the option to install either one separately. Why should I have to waste gigabytes of my HD in intros, cutscenes, sounds, maps, etc that I’m not going to use anymore once I finish the single player campaign?. If I want to play again, I can always reinstall, but in the meantime, they’re lost space.
My two pence on your list:
#1: Agree totally on alt-tab support. Far too many games allow you to al-tab out, but not back, or don’t restore to the correct resolution… grrr. Drives me up the wall.
#2: I always use Advanced/Custom install options, so this is rarely an issue for me. But installers that don’t allow you to customise your install options… hate.
#3: Disagree. The game should automatically default to the resolution and settings that give you the best balance between looks and frame rate. Most LCD panels scale pretty well these days, and I would much rather have a good frame rate at a non-native resolution than a hi-def slideshow.
#4: Definitely agree. Though this wasn’t really something I cared about until I bought myself a widescreen laptop.
#5: I’d rather have an uninstall that actually got rid of all the shit in the registry and the file system without me having to hunt for it manually. Far too many uninstallers still leave all that crap on the system for absolutely no discernible reason at all.
#6: Absolutely bloody yes. This is the one overriding reason I’ve re-bought titles I already own on Steam. Do I really want to be spending half an hour hunting down rogue disks that I’ve misplaced in the wrong box? Hell no. Let me do a full install and run the game from the hard drive.
#7: I’m not a fan of quicksave/quickload in general. They encourage lazy play and lazy design. Get rid of them entirely, use a decent checkpoint system and design in a proper difficulty curve. Don’t use the goddamn save system to balance your game.
#8: When the revolution comes and I rule the world, unskippable cutscenes will be punishable by death. And as for developer logos, I only want to see them ONCE. I don’t need to be reminded of them EVERY GODDAMN TIME I LOAD UP THE GAME. Have them run once after install and then auto-delete them. I want to play your game, not be forced to sit through movies telling me how awesome you are. I spent money on your game to play it, not have to spend five minutes each time I start the game up watching your futile self-promotion.
#9: Again, this can be circumvented with better design and a good checkpoint save system. And, you know, actually shipping products that aren’t buggy pieces of shovelware.
#10: See point #9. Patches should improve functionality or add content, they shouldn’t be used as a matter of course to plug holes that should have been fixed before the game even got put on the shelves.
WASD is fail!! cursor keys foreva!! ;p
And I’ll add: it’s really really stupid when only some of the keys can be ramapped, because, after all, they are just numbers!
It’s easy to see what’s standard and not with respect to save directories if you use a non-English version of Windows. Since it isn’t translated it’s easy to see that “My Games” is not a standard (even though many use it), but the “Saved Games” directly under *username* is, at least in Vista. As cliffski noted nobody seems to use it though, mine is properly localized and completely empty. It’s also annoying if someone doesn’t even bother to get the localized documents folder so that you get one extra folder in English.
@Iain
Yes. YES! And there is one easy way I’ve found for 90% of games. You can usually just go in and delete the logo files from the folder (often in bik format). if not, make a 640×480 black png file in paint, and make a 1 frame bik file out of that using radtools (google em) and then replace the logo video files in the folder with the 1 frame file, renaming where appropriate. Not only does this save a lot of unskippable ubisoft tunnels and nvidia whispering, it also can seriously speed up the start time of games! FarCry loads in about 6 seconds without cutscenes.
in fact, you know what, I’m feeling generous so here’s my ones
http://rapidshare.com/files/149521348/640.bik.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/149521349/800.bik.html
don’t be fooled by the size, these babies are less than a kilobyte each. 1 frame long
When installing, if I change the install drive it would be nice if the installer didn’t forget the rest of the suggested path in its entirity, but instead adapt it to the new drive. Chances are I won’t use much of it, but it’s nice to have the option. Many Indie games get this right. Most commercial ones don’t.
I’d agree with all of this, with an addendum to point 2: let me put saves where I want as well…I HATE the My Games folder. On my computer, the C: drive is for Windows and other things I don’t totally mind having to nuke every 6 months.
Actually, come to think of it, here’s another one…don’t use the registry at all. I see some other right-thinking people have mentioned this already, but I’d like to add to this. The Windows registry system is terrible. Why should programs need information from outside their directories in order to operate? Linux seems to do fine without this. I therefore propose that developers of all programs stop using the registry, so that Microsoft can get rid of it in future.
Yeah, right.
to be fair unskippable intro logos arent exactly pc-specific and are probably worse on console because you can’t hack them out
In regards to Alt-Tab: using the desktop cube plugin on Linux allows a fullscreen app, for example TF2, to be running on one of the sides, with your IM programs on the other. And then maybe a fullscreen video on the third. And I think I’ll go a browser window on the fourth. (Though of course you are by no means limited to 4 sides.)
Alt-tab? Who needs it?
Serious now, I agree with a few points here, some in the comments too, but it’s getting late and I can’t remember what I was going to say about various suggestions. Though I do agree that save game locations need to be standardised. Come on Microsoft! Not that that cry has ever motivated them.
I can’t get behind point 1. There’s an argument for running some MMOs or the most casual of casual games in a window while you do other stuff, but the rest of the time it’s not unreasonable to ask the player to give a game their full attention. I bet you don’t turn your phone off in the cinema either.
Also, who are these people playing games on flat panel screens at non-native resolutions, for the sake of performance?
Lowering detail settings > Jabbing a fork in your eye > Wrong-res disgustovision.
I adored Max Payne for preserving the second quicksave.
A few people have mentioned this, but games should not usurp the keyboard input. Games that both can’t run in windowed mode AND block my keyboard’s music controls drive me insane. I play almost all my games listening to my own music, and preferably in windowed mode for easy random googling/wikipediaing, IMs, and doing other things when stupid cutscenes I’ve seen a hundred times and can’t skip crop up. Max Payne takes a hit on that one for the long intro cinematic.
2 things you left off. First, you should be able to rebind every single key to any action used by the game, period. Second, you should be able to disable the developer / distributor intro’s when you start a game. The first time I boot up, fine. The next 1000… no.
gamesaves are better in the mydocs folder anywhere, than in the individual game folders, IMO. so long as all the developers adopt a convention about where they will be and they all go the same place in an individual subfolder named clearly after the game. why? so i can easily set up my system to run a daily or weekly backup of every save in every game, without having to hunt down where they all are, and add a new location to the backup every time i install a new game.
My God, I’m in total agreement about not needing the CD. I installed GTA:San Andreas for some good times, but just never got around to playing it because finding the CD was too much hassle.
For a sidenote on cinematics – after the first time I start up a game, launch me directly into the main menu. Yes, the first time, show me the logos of all the studios and development teams involved. Fine.
Then show me the introduction. Fine.
Every other time I play, though, skip all that and let me get to the play!
I am a big proponent of all games having passive computer versus computer play so you can just sit back and watch the thing play itself. Great camera moves make it even better.
Games really shouldn’t store saved games in their own folders, for all the good reasons that have been said, it breaks under limited user in XP and UAC in Vista & Windows 7 (when it arrives).
It’s a real tricky one though, ’cause if people don’t standardise properly you get a real horrible mess. It doesn’t help that Microsoft have only recently come to their senses and made My Documents not your default folder for everything.
I read a Valve guy say on the Steam forums once they wanted a better Alt-Tab experience but some deficiency in the API made it impossible to do it right, or something, and switching to DX10 would probably fix the problem.
This is a wonderful list. What so sad is they didn’t already think of it. It not like these are hard things to come up with!
There is however one very important one:
11. Game updates don’t require some third party application running in the tray.
Vodiii: You can disable it ever doing that in the control pannel, although I do agree that games should atomatically disable it while they run. The more annoying one that windows does is that stupid key. You can disable it but it requires a registry hack which is a bit much.
No. Do NOT put save games into “My Games”, or any bloody where else under “My documents” or the user profile. Keep savegames out of windows shoddy profiles PLEASE. Windows does weird shit with its profiles, and I don’t want my savegames to have any part in it!
Keep my save games in a save games subdirectory of that games directory.
Why? Cause when that inevitable repair install of windows comes along, the windows profile is the bit that can get wiped out.
Re: the ProgramData comment. That is actually the correct location in Vista for things like save games, these days. Any data relating to the program, in fact, that isn’t a separate document.
Now whether a save game qualifies as a document is another matter. But you don’t usually double click on the save game to launch the game itself…
Unskippable logo videos
Unbindable keys – godamn EVERY key should be able to be bound to what I want not hardcoded to the developers retarded buttons. Fuck you EA for constantly screwing that one up. God I remember how godawful Battlefield 42 and 2 were.
Invert mouse… wtf Overlord?
Quick save and load have to be available… I don’t want to use a menu to save.
Exit the game to desktop with one button (esc) and one mouse click – maybe 2 at most (confirmation) – what the fuck were you thinking Assassins creed?
Adjustable graphics in different criteria for the advanced ppl. Not High Medium Low and thats it.
Surround sound that speech actually works with properly. Wayyyyyyy toooooo many games can’t get the centre channel speech thing right so you can’t hear jack about what characters are saying!
Multiple User profiles…. Come on. Spore, etc.
Cut scenes that have been unlocked can be watched anytime from a menu.
Menu to facilitate playing from any level you have unlocked ala HL2 or even unlocked a la AITD
Cut scenes can be paused at anytime… WMP can do it, why can’t your game?
ESC has to be bound to the menu… looking at you STARCRAFT, etc!
Mouse buttons fully bindable. It’s retarded but many games say use a mouse configuration utility to macro bind your mouse buttons to keyboard presses. That is retarded.
Better in game server browsers… Uhhhh I still lament the takeover of the all seeing eye as 99% of in game browsers are absolute gash and slow as shit. I don’t need to ping 3000 servers only to find 3 are in australia. fucking give me an ip/location filter.
bloatware… i’m looking at you PhysX and gamespy comrade etc. Fuck off and die. I will never EVER use your shit.
Mouse delay… seriously… so many games seem to crop up with this issue? It can’t purely be performance related? – prioritise the mouse calculations!
Slow text…. Maybe I’m a fast reader? Maybe I’m older than 10, maybe I’m not a retard? I can read text godamn faster than you can default scroll it for me. Fix it. (Most infuriatingly xbox dashboard is the biggest culprit here)
ALT-Tab I can understand is hard because of the kernel etc. I would settle for the secondary monitor being able to park MSN etc on there and be usable without having to close the game window. Only some old games can handle that :(
thats all I can think of on my lunch break
Someone needs to compile and repost this into a much more in depth list. Perhaps with branching off options where multiple preferences occur.
Big issues for me are the ability to remap keys and skip through those intro videos.
I tend to prefer needing a CD over other DRM methods personally. It is far less evil than spyware or limited installs. Though what was wrong with serial codes for games?
Oh for crying out loud. It had been repeatedly stated in this thread that this is an unworkable solution on any recent OS since normal users DO NOT have write permission in directories outside their user directory. It doesn’t matter how much it annoys you, that’s just how it is.
Re: Any of Valve’s Source games, try this:
Right-click on the game in the Steam list, go to Properties -> Set launch options
Enter “-sw -noborder” without the quotes
-sw runs it in a window and -noborder takes away the title bar and the minimise/close icons … if you’re running at desktop resolution it looks for all intents and purposes as if the game is running fullscreen, with instantaneous Alt-Tab support.
Performance hit seems to be minimal and it gives you all the Alt-Tab use you need ;)
P.S: Oh, and putting in “-novid” also removes the Valve and Steam logos from playing
@rocketman71
Back in the day, games often asked you if you wanted to install ‘hi-res textures’. When you don’t have a hi-spec PC it’d be nice if games didn’t have to install 10GB of files you’ll never use.
@Simon
You can move the location of the User folder to another drive, right click on the folders and you’ll see a location option.
Also agree with what people are saying about:
* annoying intros. It’s like online videos, where you have to sit through an advert before you are allowed to get to the good bit.
* multimonitor support. Often I disable one monitor before I launch a game, having a game crash because I clicked too far to the right is anti-fun.
*multiple user profiles. I recommend we provide all development studios with girlfriends who like to overwrite their quicksaves.
Also agree with people who say that it is better for games to autodetect a suitable resolution than just defaulting to native res. I don’t want Crysis running at 3k x 2k, I’m not trying to use it to make my desktop wallpaper.
umm.. what else. Even if you are anti-quicksave there should still be save on exit. I shouldn’t have to quit to main menu to change my controls. Dear devs: Not all PCs have internet connections. More games should have garden gnomes.
Just a tip for most intro vids/cutscenes”nvidia ubi ati intel…”
most game videos on pc are .bik you can just replace them with a blank file and the game will skip them
so lats say rename EA.bik to EA.bik_ and make a new blank text or image file “0 byte file” and name it EA.bik so now the game skips the EA logo shit
Another thing always alow the keybindes to be changed some of us like ESDF more than WASD
PS sorry about my spelling :-)
Oh just thought of something else: adjustable FOV! Why oh why oh why has 75 become standard
1, 4 and 6 top my list. The disk-in-drive shit has got to stop.
“1. Alt-tab support.”
“3. Automatically set themselves to your desktop screen resolution”
Oh yes. When a game launches for the first time, discovers a widescreen TV my PC is attached to and sets the resolution to 1280*720 which is not supported via standard D-Sub connector, having me Alt+F4 close the game (or even reset the machine because Alt+Tab surely wont work) and find the cfgs and inis to edit manually – I personally want to hunt the developers and castrate them. After all – 1280*720 is not native PC resolution, it’s standard HD resolution for (damned) consoles.