By Jim Rossignol on October 30th, 2009 at 9:59 am.
I’ve been meaning to put up some Borderlands tweaking instructions all week, but I don’t think I could have done it better than this thread on the Gearbox forums. Thanks to Mr Berry for pointing that out to us. Crucially, one of the commands in there allows you disable the voice-comms for the game, so you can use something more sensible. We’ve had no word back from 2K/Gearbox on whether there will be a patch for that stuff, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough. If you are tweaking, don’t forget to back up the relevant files before you start editing, as there might be some problems with loss of keybinds and such. The other issue is port forwarding, the instructions for which are in this thread. If you’re having trouble hosting/connecting to co-op games then you probably need to get busy with that stuff. Sigh.
Not to be that guy, but the fact that some of this stuff isn’t available in (say) the options is pretty bad. And good god, unskippable cutscenes? Come ooooooooooon.
It’s brilliant that there’s a community that can be bothered to do this though.
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Mmmm, port forwarding. Another point to dedicated servers. Yeah yeah yeah OT I know.
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the game starts with [HIT ENTER TO START]……is there anything more to say ?
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yep, you can just click the left mouse button instead :)
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If one dev is reading this:
I don’t need you to tell me that ESC close a window. Or I only need that information once.
Not every button need the text of the command as a label [enter]lalala, [esc]yadda, [w]foo.
Make videos skypable. Theres no exceptions. Yea, even the class selecion bus thingie.
For ammo, Is a bit better the option “If I walk over it, my character automatically get it”. Oh… and give me a button to drop current weapon ammo.
Server browsers, for god sake. From Quake2 this has been perfect. Order by ping. Number of players. Playing something. It seems about the 90% of the server listed are people behind firewalls. The game sould detect a guy that can’t host, that have his ports closed, and show that the guy is “firewalled”… or warn the player. Hell.. even a webpage to test these ports is good. Tryiing to use upnp may help too.
Move the interface elements to the border. The current interface seems optimized for Old TV’s with round corners. …*cough*.. is 2009 guys, no one uses these old TV’s anymore. And PC gamers have *never* use then. Also the text color (white) is a bit too bright. A option to change is color will be nice. Hell… give me a “scale UI” thing, to scale the whole ui, fonts, icons, etc.. oh, and a change FOV.
So, Borderlands. What is this game? a AA title?, a indie game? a bad port? I think is a bad port, you guys are not new to creating games or lack the resources. Please make ports better. Hell.. some stuff, like change the default FOV can be done by a trained monkey in 2 min. Why the hell is the game released with the console fov default??????? I mean *loudvoice*WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS *loudvoice*.
Other than that, nice game :-)
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Level 25 so far here, playing on PC because my bro’s XBOX RROD’d and we wanted to play coop. Equipped with 2 Iridian weapons (they rock) and a shotgun that can kill Typed Skags 2 levels above me with two round, and I didn’t see or care all those “problems”.
PC gamers are such whiners!
Escape, clicking X, who gives a fuck. Really… who does?
About Firewalls : Fucking routers will be the death of multi player PC gaming. It took me about 3 seconds to Google “Borderlands Port” to find the right ports to open, and I have no problem hosting games, even if I host them over wireless with a proxy. Complaining about this is really sad, because you need to do this IN EVERY SINGLE COMMERCIAL PC GAME, especially if you want to host games.
I’m pretty sure that the screen elements ARE placed like this on purpose to fit in as many TVs as possible, but those are console makers specifications, not the programmers’ whims. And I’m happy that they are, because when I play on a my PC connected to a projector, they are right where they should.
And the FOV? The game is perfectly playable with the default FOV. Yes, it might look better with a different value, but really, it’s not game breaking, far from it.
I agree with the skipeable video, but thats just nitpicking. I won’t use the character screen more than 4 times in all of this game’s life, I don’t care. Call me a lowly Console Player if you want, but apparently the snobish crowd is on PC now.
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like Tei said,
there is no freaking reason to force the player to pick up ammo or money, it is shared so whats the point ? just pick it up automatically either when walking near or just “suck” all ammo and money in a small radius, right now you spend 40% of the game looking at the ground picking up ammo, often missing enemies charging at you until they have already hit you
about the unskippable cutscenes, this is unforgivable, you can “skip” the video cutscenes by renaming the video files (a must unless you want to go insane watching those damn corporate logos every time), some of the others are skipable (i dunno what i clicked since i was flailing at the kb like mad but i skipped the bus scene before char selection after the video intro) but not all of them, and then there is the whole “tutorial” part (until you get the cars i guess) that is just plain PAINFUL to replay, come on guys, you make a game that is supposed to be replayed a hundred times and you force a long and boring running around tutorial on us ?
one thing Tei didnt mention, the forced use of page up and page down to read quest descriptions … what the hell ? use the damn mouse wheel, or WS or up and down or at least let me reassign them jeez
so far, it feels like a very crappy port , its like they never even thought about the replayability value and the single player mode gets tedious pretty fast (probably because the character development is so soulless and the always-charging-at-you enemies get really annoying, at least in coop the sometimes charge at somebody else), Torchlight kicks the crap out of borderlands at every single feature
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Seeing Gutter’s post about PC player bitching getting sandwhiched between two posts filled with PC player bitching is hilarious and a little heartbreaking.
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bah, i wouldnt bitch about specific features if i didnt like it, the game had HUGE potential but felt short in almost every way possible, its sad to say the least
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Complaining about the complaining is stupid (I am now complaining about the complaining about the complaining). It is the PC version of the game, it is not unreasonable to suggest that folks expect it to be optimised for the platform it’s on. Defending negligence is just stupid. Yes, it’s a great game, but it’s a got a pile of stupid stuff that should have been dealt with before release, perhaps during that mythical ‘optimisation’ week. Yes, I also don’t appreciate being lied to.
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Ah yes, the week where they were optimizing it whilst it was sitting in retailers. Maybe the were working on a PC patch and.. no wait the 360 and PS3 versions are patched already but not the PC. Whoops.
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I don’t see how bitching about legitimate bitching makes any sense. Most games have the options to disable (or at least turn the volume to mute) in their ingame voice comms, options for vsync, etc. And no, you don’t have to forward ports on every PC game to host, very few… and i don’t recall a game where i had to forward about 10 ports/ranges.
But sure, go ahead and call PC gamers ‘snobs’ for complaining about things that should be included in a game. Personally i already went into the config files and did all the tweaking i needed, but the amounts of ports i had to forward was a bit silly.
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Oh, and yeah i have 2 x lvl 20s and a couple of them in their teen-levels. Great game, really one of the best and most absorbing experiences i’ve had in the past years, but the few problems that is has (mentioned above) really are schoolboy errors, imo. Just things that should be sorted and probably would have taken next to not time on someone’s lunch break to do, like adding a menu button for voice comms toggle, V-sync, etc. ;)
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“PC gamers are such whiners!”
You’re right, I should just accept the fact that I can’t host/join any multiplayer games. Maybe I should port forward for GAME FUCKING SPY. While I’m at it, let’s listen to some 90′s music while I use Mplayer.
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“Complaining about this is really sad, because you need to do this IN EVERY SINGLE COMMERCIAL PC GAME, especially if you want to host games.”
Wut? I have a shelf stacked with multiplayer games that handled the ports for me and closed them when they were finished. Why is Borderlands a magic exception?
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The port forwarding is actually pretty normal for hosting a PC game. It’s true of all source games (except for L4D) for example.
On the other hand, how would you feel, Gutter if you slotted a game in the 360, and discovered it was made for the PC and hadn’t had anything changed? So the text was too small to be comfortably readable. Everything is mouse driven, so to close windows like the inventory screen, you need to use your analogue sticks to move a cursor to a small X in the top right that is fiddly to hit. The options screen has a myriad of performance options, despite the fact that all 360s are the same and its a waste of time – although the game does default to a resolution that doesn’t display properly on most TVs. If there were more controls than buttons on the controller, but no way to map multiple actions to one button. Because those are the sorts of problems that Borderlands has.
Also, one that took the biscuit for me was the sliders for audio volume – you can’t drag them. Instead, have to use left and right arrows!
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“The port forwarding is actually pretty normal for hosting a PC game. It’s true of all source games (except for L4D) for example.”
There’s a reason L4D is an exception; no other Source games that I’m aware of are in any way geared towards playing locally hosted games. Sure, you can do it, but do you actually know anyone who plays locally hosted TF2 games on a regular basis? I don’t. The game should at least use UPnP.
That said, I’m loving the game, just not loving how much tweaking and tinkering and dicking around I’ve had to do to get it up to par with most other new AAA PC games.
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“Complaining about this is really sad, because you need to do this IN EVERY SINGLE COMMERCIAL PC GAME, especially if you want to host games.”
Funny, I haven’t had to forward a port since 2000.
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Auto-picking up stuff would be a bad idea for multiplayer I expect. Still, a separate key for scooping up loot in a radius (as perfectly executed in Sacred), which does not also reload your weapon or activate items or enter a vehicle, would be nice.
No key for activating medical kits is just kind of weird. At the point where I am now I never use the things anyway, but it’s weird to have to pause the game and look at an inventory screen to do this.
All the other interface issues are pretty minor, though making more of those config things easily accessible would have been smart. Checkboxes for whether zoom and crouch are toggles, etc.
Despite the flaws I am loving the crap out of this game.
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Autopicking ammo and money would work perfectly since both do no take space and are shared among players, like it works now the game forces you to spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at the floor slowing down gameplay (im guessing this is even more annoying on consoles without mouse tho)
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You can hold down ‘E’ over an item and it will pick up all ammo and cash near you.
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wrong
first you need to be aiming at an ammo piece (so you HAVE to look at the floor)
and it doesnt pick up everything *near* you, only ammo *directly* in front of you and very very close
it also picks up quest items and i think money (not 100% sure on that one)
it doesnt really make it any less annoying, it helps when picking up ammo from chest when its near, but when you are picking up drops they are usually not close enough to pick up at once
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It’s an awesome game, it just needs a little help is all. Disabling mouse smoothing, enabling V-synch and increasing FOV = win.
Just got my first rocket launcher – it has 3 round burst :-)
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I feel the same way, Its an amazing game… It’s just plagued by many many small annoyances. If those get patched out then its definitely a contender for GotY in my book.
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I don’t know about GotY. It’s a nice implementation of Diablo loot in a shooter, but I don’t think it will last even 1% as long as Diablo 2 did. It doesn’t have randomly generated environments, the Co-op is badly done, the RPG elements are sparse, the classes and talents are too simple with only 1 active skill per class, and there’s Respawning. RESPAWNING. You just don’t do that in a shooter.
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I don’t know about GotY. It’s a nice implementation of Diablo loot in a shooter, but I don’t think it will last even 1% as long as Diablo 2 did. It doesn’t have randomly generated environments, the Co-op is badly done, the RPG elements are sparse, the classes and talents are too simple with only 1 active skill per class, and there’s Respawning. RESPAWNING. You just don’t do that in a shooter.
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Respawning? IN A SHOOTER?
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It’s more likely than you think.
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He must be trolling. Respawning is in every single shooter that can call itself a shooter.
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Are we talking about enemy respawn, or are we talking about Bioshock-style “I respawn but you’re still hurt” nonsense? What’s the penalty for dying?
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You lose cash for dying and are ported back to the nearest New-U station. Enemies regain all their health iirc.
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So basically you lose cash and progress, sounds like pretty standard RPG stuff then. Thanks for the information TB.
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What I would dearly love is a way to quit out of ingame menus that doesn’t involve pressing escape (I use the cursor keys for movement, and no I’m not left handed).
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wat
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what.
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wat
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What?
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wot?!
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Why?
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Wot?
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who
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Pardon?
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Que?
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you can press the x at the top of the screen
cursor keys:
What!?, i’m left handed and don’t even do that!
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wha?!
The last shooter I played using the cursor keys was the original Doom. When it came out.
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dark forces for me.
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BAFFLEMENT AND SURPRISE!
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Inconceivable!
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Yay, another person who uses the cursor keys!
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Yeah, Dark Forces. Maybe HL1 for about five seconds.
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Cursor keys?!?!?! Madness
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I’m playing it on the Xbox.
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Basically, although I’m half decent at computer games, I’m completely cack handed. I have been known to lose my keys as it is, if I was using the traditional ‘WSAD + a billion other keys’ I would be virtually crippled. I could get away with it back in the 8-bit days because you only ever had about 4 or 5 keys, widely seperated.
So I use cursor keys for movement, with other actions mapped to shift, control, return, numeric keypad and that little bank with delete and stuff. I think most other pc gamers are secretly jealous, but lack the desk space to emulate me.
I also invert.
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The FOV is based on the distance from the monitor. The original FOV is for people playing at 2m from the monitor, I suppose on a sofa, with a control pad. But on a PC, keyboard, mouse, etc… Is the wrong FOV, and make my head hurt. Is not as bad in open areas, but is horrible in dungeons. I have w binded to move forward and reset FOV to 96. But is a bit glitchy in vehicles. I hope future game ports to PC remenber to change the FOV to something sane for a PC. We don’t play 2 meters away from the monitor here, guys.
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Thank you for pointing this out. I’d noticed that OpFlashpoint DR felt weird, as if my view was constantly zoomed in by 25%. I’m guessing that as another console port it has the same issue.
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Yeah. Nice “optimisation” guys…
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What fun this game is, Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
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BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM
BLAM BLAM
BLAM BLAM
*cover*
*reload*
BLAM BLAM BLAM
RAAAAAAGH
*melees*
Theoban Agrees.
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I’m sad to say (God knows I love L4D and pre-ordered L4D2) but the demo for L4D2 suffers from the exact same problem. Weapons take up more of your perspective than in the original.
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Was @ Tei
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The weapons in Borderlands are less obtrusive than the L4D2 ones, which is pretty sad.
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i was getting chronic tearing until i turned vsync on in the ini file
also turned on DX10 but i dont know if that does anything
and nicer bloom but i dont know if that does anything either
all i need now is some AA :)
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Thanks for this post. Those unskippable intro movies were driving me insane.
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I’m loving it, at 1st I wasn’t too sure but I’m in the areas past New Haven and its bloody awesome
add me Heliosicle please :D
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The unkillable in-game VOIP is terrible. It sounds like shit, you can’t disable it in normal options and worst of all, I couldn’t find a volume control slider! Who DOES that!? Thank goodness for ini fixes. I’ve recommended several people to not buy this game because it’s a pretty poor port. The voodoo it takes to get a multiplayer game going is the worst. The single-player isn’t fun and I didn’t buy this game for it so multiplayer better work.
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I wanted to punch baby ducks because of the unskippable Nvidia logo (FUCK OFF Nvidia) and other crap logos when you first load up the game, god those are awful. It makes me want to avoid those companies, especially Nvidia with all their marketing.
As neems mentions above : “Disabling mouse smoothing, enabling V-synch and increasing FOV = win.” Yes sir! I agree whole heartedly.
There is also a tweak that makes zoom a toggle option, so you don’t have to hold down the zoom key. That was ace as well.
And on port forwarding: C’mon guys, you’re on a PC, port forwarding just comes with the territory. If you can’t be buggered to figure out how and complain about it, then maybe you should use a simpler system? Consoles are for people that don’t want to tweak anything and expect things to work straight out of the box. The PC has always been about tweaking things to your liking (see all the tweaks/mods for any game, ever).
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killing the video files works wonders, the logos are 2K_logo.bik Gearbox_logo.bik and NVidia.bik, just rename them or delete them
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The last game I had to forward ports for was Rainbow Six. The original one. Seriously, why is it I can play L4D, Arma2, TF2, Killing Floor, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, QuakeLive, Stalker, Call of Duty 4, Counter Strike, Counter-Strike Source, Day of Defeat, HLDM, TFC, and Dawn of War without doing anything, but I need to ‘forward ports’ (and that is reported to not work by most people) for this one game?
Don’t even TRY to blame PC gaming here – this is laziness pure and simple.
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Oh the videos where the first thing I went in and fixed, believe me. So all is good now. :) Baby ducks rejoice!
On port forwarding. The difference lies with hosting the game on your own computer, that’s where the issue pops up. Most of the games connect you and your friends to an outside dedicated server (like L4D, COD4, TF2 to name a few), so there is no need to forward ports. However, when YOU are the server and others are connecting to your machine (as in Borderlands, COD:W@W for Nazi Zombies, hosting your own Synergy/HL2/whatever dedicated server, etc), then port forwarding becomes an issue.
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Level 25 so far here, playing on PC because my bro’s XBOX RROD’d and we wanted to play coop. Equipped with 2 Iridian weapons (they rock) and a shotgun that can kill Typed Skags 2 levels above me with two round, and I didn’t see or care all those “problems”.
Clearly you are used to the ways a console work, so you see no problem with the game
Escape, clicking X, who gives a fuck. Really… who does?
People that are forced to use such awnfull system. Is a ankward key. Is the emergency button for wen everything else fails. is bad usability.
Fucking routers will be the death of multi player PC gaming. It took me about 3 seconds to Google “Borderlands Port” to find the right ports to open, and I have no problem hosting games, even if I host them over wireless with a proxy. Complaining about this is really sad, because you need to do this IN EVERY SINGLE COMMERCIAL PC GAME”
we need IPv6, but the ISP are lazy and greedy, NAT must go away, everyone sould own more than 10 ip address…
I’m pretty sure that the screen elements ARE placed like this on purpose to fit in as many TVs as possible,
PC dont use analog old TVs, but monitors, i don’t like to have my 2009 games limited by the poorest quality 1984 tv’s. The UI get in the way, sould be moved to the sides.
but those are console makers specifications, not the programmers’ whims.
hence the bad port thingie, not fixing these console limits.
And I’m happy that they are, because when I play on a my PC connected to a projector, they are right where they should.
your proyector suck
And the FOV? The game is perfectly playable with the default FOV. Yes, it might look better with a different value, but really, it’s not game breaking, far from it.
no better, is not a eyecandy issue, people feel fisically sick with the current fov, I am one of these dudes. fortunally enough, it can be fixed with ini hackings
You are happy how consoles works, thats ok to me. but the PC work differently and changes sould be made to port to the PC.
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Wait, didn’t Pitchford say in an interview that the PC version (to paraphrase) ‘would be optimized for it, because we know PC gaming’ etc etc’? This is the WORST port I’ve played since Assassins Creed. And the multiplayer is so bad I haven’t even been able to try it yet!
WHO THE FUCK USES GAMESPY. Sorry it has to be repeated as often and loud as possible.
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I’ve done 95% of my playing on multiplayer, it’s fun, though it’d be cooler if it increased the amount of enemies that spawn, rather than making them be able to kill you in a few shots (once you had 3-4 people they really hurt).
They made it use your Gamespy login name as your multiplayer ingame name also, which is a bit shitty as renaming your character on the New-U console does nothing, but ho hum.
Thing is, little things like all the complaints here are all so friggin easy to sort out. They could have ‘optimised’ all of the above complaints in a day, so they must have been chilling during the extra PC ‘week’ they took. =P
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I haven’t been able to connect to anyone on my friendslist in a game at all, ever. Once I was able to connect to my GF’s game, then we both crashed. I’ve tried on three PC’s, two of which had no routers at all, and the other people were Tech Support for their jobs, hahaha.
Seriously, 99% of these problems are exactly what I experienced when I was last using Gamespy. So fuck this /shrug.
I’ve been told it’s fun, but I wouldn’t know, because I can’t get it to work.
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Well I’m just glad it wasn’t live. :/
Don’t know why they just didn’t use steam and a server brower.
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Yeah it’s daft. I’m normally fine with Networking stuff, i just started my 2nd year of study in it at uni infact. I forwarded all the ports and such that i found were needed and yet it still won’t always work.
In the end i found the only SURE way to get it to work (at least with my setup, might be my router, it’s been a bit fiddly recently) is to put myself as the DMZ, enable uPNP on the router. Then i have to start the game, go to ”Host Private Game”, shut that lobby down, open the lobby again, THEN invite. For some reason it just times out for my friends if i don’t open the lobby a 2nd time.
Hopefully by the end of my study i can know why these voodoo things happen, already feel like i should. :D
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Not to worry guys, there’s a PC fix incoming as well!
Issue: PC locking up when accessing server browser
Status: Fixed!
Solution: A hotfix for this issue has been discovered and is being applied. This hotfix is invisible – users don’t have to do anything for this to function properly. You should not experience this problem beyond 10/28
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This serverside fix looks to me sending a short list of entrys, so the UI don’t collapse. If you press E the list refresh with a new list of servers. Is also a good idea to try these of high level players of people that talk about “open ports” on the server name.
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Unfortunately the multiplayer is pretty horked. And no, not just the ports (which was a hassle and inexcusable in this day and age. Sorry, but I can host & join every other AAA title without doing this, it looks like the devs haven’t learned anything from SupCom and Demigod, ie. requiring ports and whatnot will kill your online community faster than digital ebola.)
The server browser is terrible and never lists all the games, and some people just can’t join games at all.
My buddy can host (but connections drop after 5 min) but he can’t join any game at all and all his settings are correct and open, it just doesn’t work for him.
Luckily on my pc everything works like a charm and multiplayer is a blast. Except that I can’t play with my friend.. which was kinda the point.
Oh and if you have SLI it’s 50/50 if it’ll work for you, but that’s par for the course with SLI I guess.
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Ugh. I hate to say it, but this is exactly what I was afraid of when they started announcing DLC packs before they even released the game. I hope they get to patching this, and showing some real support for the PC version of the game. I’d hate to end up passing on it, underneath the issues it looks like a fantastic game.
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I’m surprised at the number of games that still mess up VoIP, where seeing it disabled right on the server and replaced with TeamSpeak (etc.) servers is the norm rather than the exception.
I’d have thought we’d have plenty of examples of how to do it right by now, and plenty of reasonably-priced (or even free) implementations for new games to choose from, by now.
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For small groups (2 or 3 players) I’ve never found an in-game voice system that was superior to just linking up on Skype before entering the game. Since I don’t really play with pick up groups, in-game VoIP isn’t something that concerns me much. If you’re going to advertise a game as drop-in drop-out multiplayer, though, it’s pretty obvious a significant portion of your users are going to be utilizing in-game chat, and it’s kind of criminal not to ensure it works well before releasing.
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On port forwarding. The difference lies with hosting the game on your own computer, that’s where the issue pops up. Most of the games connect you and your friends to an outside dedicated server (like L4D, COD4, TF2 to name a few), so there is no need to forward ports. However, when YOU are the server and others are connecting to your machine (as in Borderlands, COD:W@W for Nazi Zombies, hosting your own Synergy/HL2/whatever dedicated server, etc), then port forwarding becomes an issue. If you are the “dedicated server”, then ports must be opened to allow others to connect to you.
I wouldn’t be surprised if COD:MW2 has the exact same problems on PC as Borderlands with regards to port forwarding issues. We shall see!
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Oh wow. I’ve played all those games and with all of them tried and failed to host MP games. I never knew why until now. Man, I feel stupid.
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I’d hate to end up passing on it, underneath the issues
To be fair, I am finding them to be “minor annoyances” surrounding the game rather than issues. The game itself looks, runs and plays exceptionally well. It’s not Batman: AA when it comes to the quality of the port, but it sure isn’t RE4, either.
Your mileage may vary, but it’s nothing that should stop anyone from getting it who finds the game itself appealing.
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I’d mainly be buying it to play with a friend, so the multiplayer connectivity stuff is a real concern.
Hopefully they’ll just get it all hammered out and it won’t be a thing.
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A nice idea but some people in the sticks like me still only have a 512 connection meaning running anything else in the background that uses up Internet connection brings mega lag. So no Skype for me in game.
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Kinda heartbroken by this PC port. What they did with the UI is absolutely ghastly. Mousewheel in some but not all text boxes? PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN to scroll!? SOMETIMES you can click to continue, but often you have to hit esc? Missing mouse-over states for some buttons?
Last but not least.
GAMESPY!?!?! What!?
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As a real PC gamer. i knew what i was getting into when i saw it using Gamespy. already had my ports opened and havent had a problem.
I also knew that it was UT3 engine, so i went in and personally changed all the features i wanted and needed.
There is nothing wrong with the FoV, or the UI. All i see area bunch of cry babies.
You can tell and old school gamer from the new crop of gamers, claiming to be old school or know everything about pc gaming. I'm not being elitest, nothing wrong being a newer gamer, but all they do is want want want. Us old school, instead of crying for things to get done, we do it ourselves.
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I ENTERED A POKE TO INCREASE THE MOVEMENT SPEED, BUT THEN I GOT AN R: TAPE LOADING ERROR. WHEN IS THE FREAKING PATCH COMING OUT???!?!?!1/1
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So it’s ok that I’ve had to spend 3 hours getting the game into a state that I feel comfortable with? What? I am a PC gamer. I don’t mind installing, patching, the odd bit of troubleshooting when something goes slightly wonky. I fully understand each PC is different, and what works for most people might fall over for someone else. But honestly? This shit is retarded. This is stuff common to all PCs that should have been sorted, and hasn’t.
Come on, it’s not even like we’re asking for amazing cutting edge shit here. This is basic nuts-and-bolts UI polish and despite what they’ve been trying to tell us, this is not a good PC port by any stretch of the imagination.
If you’re seriously telling me that I am a “crybaby” because I am hacked off that I had to edit a .ini file to turn off unskippable intro movies, make crouch on-press, make the mouse wheel work in text boxes(!) etc etc, then I’m a crybaby.
And honestly, I paid £27 for this. Damn fucking right I expect basic things like that to work. Why? Because EVERY OTHER PC GAME CAN DO IT.
You go back to your world where you have to spend 3 hours to get a game in a normal state, and are so clearly proud of it. I’ll hope for a world where gaming is fun, as opposed to a chore.
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Does anyone else just hate the UE3 engine? Every game I’ve played based on UE3 has been a pain to configure and even then there seems to be some mouse accel weirdness that I can’t get rid of. Also, where’s my anti-aliasing? No in-game options for it and even trying to force it usually doesn’t work with ATi cards. Source, idTech4 or CryEngine2 would have been much better.
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Lets see that list buddy. Cause im pretty sure i can explain why each of those games did if for you. Some people dont understand what peer to peer is, or what dedicated servers are, or network hosting is.
UE3 engine is actually quite powerful and extremely useful. You can rename your .exe to get AA, or just force it in nhancer for nvidia, or wait for them to patch it in the drivers. Mouse accel can be turned off if you edit the INI file also.
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I think is not constructive to label then crybabys.
You can change the fov, but it reset every time you enter/exit vehicles, warp, etc.
The people that can’t play games online, I don’t know what is the problem, but labeling that is like unfair.
I bet you own a console, so your opinion is tainted, because you don’t see anything beyond what is normal to you, on your hibrid setup.
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my opinion is tainted because i have been pc gaming for more than half my life and im only 26 now?
i own a snes and a sega. I dont own any other consoles, and never have.
I see what is normal for pc gaming since the beginning. There are those who dont because they only started a few years ago. They think that CS and Cod are when online gaming started.
I call them cry babies because thats what they are. They assume that everything should work without any help on thier own. That is against the very nature of PC gaming. Its the hybrid gamers that start playing on the PC and dont understand why something isnt working right, and immediately assume that it is nothing on thier end or under thier control, and simply blame the devs for things.
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Mouse SMOOTHING can be turned off in the INI, that’s a different thing. Yes you can use nhancer to force AA with nVidia cards, but nothing really works for ATi cards in DX9. Also you can’t rename the .exe of games you bought off Steam.
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Also, for the record, I agree with some of what Hug is saying here. Especially this part:
“They assume that everything should work without any help on thier own. That is against the very nature of PC gaming. Its the hybrid gamers that start playing on the PC and dont understand why something isnt working right, and immediately assume that it is nothing on thier end or under thier control, and simply blame the devs for things.”
I completely agree with this statement. If you want to game on the PC, you have to understand that just about everything will take some trouble shooting to get working properly. It comes with the territory. If someone doesn’t want to deal with that, then the best thing is to just play on a console. There really isn’t any other better option. You either invest the time to research and troubleshoot for the PC, or decide to play in a strictly controlled console environment where nearly every variable has been eliminated.
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On the other hand, it’s still a shoddy port, and to deny that is lunacy.
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I guess I am just a whiney ‘hybrid’ (who only plays on PC, and has for 20 years) player because I cant get GAME FUCKING SPY to connect me to an online game. After port forwarding to 1999, too.
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Hello Mr. Hug :-). you sould not call people names just because you *think* people are this and that, 1) because you could be wrong, and be for nothing. 2) because it don’t help. 3) it create problems for you and for other people. 4)it adds nothing to a discussion, only noise.
What you end doing, looks much like a straw man argument. He…. do I **really** have to link the wikipedia article here? seems so :-/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
You seems, like you need to read it.
I am programmer, I started programming at 9 years old, I am 35 years old now. If a game is broken the way is broken in Borderlands, sure, give me the source code and I may fix a thing here and there… I am not new to game engine coding… but is not my job, I pay other people to fill that roll. And wen these other people do is job poorly, and I have paid such guy, I have the right to whine to him. I also have the right to use the freedom of speech, to vent my opinion about his game.
The game is very good, Is still to see if theres some replayability (It don’t look much better than Hellgate London, that has almost none). But the game is a poor port. It could be lazyness, It could be lack of the key people that understand how games are made on the PC, so use whatever know about consoles on the PC. It could be that is a task assigned to the low bidder, so is a quick and dirty task. I don’t know, I know only the result, and has this, and this, and this other, and that other, and all these problems… some are game breaking bugs, like that bug that remove all the skills from your character. That is a severe bug, and everyone that has been hit by it, has all the rights on the world to complain really loud, is a fucking fucked bug. People that can’t play online, again, is a really ugly problem. I don’t know why or how, maybe you have to blame these people computer setups but seems the game is creating more problems than other games. The game FOV, how is that excusable? is just a number in a text file, theres nothing easier to change. I could understand not chaning it in Bioshock, if the maps are compiled in a way, that maybe a different FOV value… but the game already have bigger FOV values support!.. is just that the ranges for 4:3 and 16:9 are wrong, are too low, and designed for people that don’t exist, people that play with the screen 3 metters away. Since the games have these problems. You don’t see any problem, fine, maybe you are used to how these console ports work, so your head don’t hurt if you play with a very low FOV. Try to change the FOV you are using on a game from 70 (or whatever you like to use) to 50 and play with that, that way you will understand how all other people feel.
Hope we can be friends from now on, else…
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Tei, what is your take on Gearbox’s claim that Borderlands was developed for PC first and then ported to consoles?
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Lol, don’t get him started!! Tei’s right about all the things he mentions though. Fortunately we can tweak the config files to fix most of the small things that are annoying: mouse smoothing, fov, toggle zoom, disable voice, make quest boxes mouse wheel scrollable… there are fixes for all those things. Hopefully Gearbox comes along and patches those into the game in a much more official way, but I am glad I’m on the PC where I can tweak and change things to my hearts content.
Also, this game is awesome.
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@Tei : Nothing you wrote there makes me think that you aren’t a cry baby.
Many high profile games made for PC have the same problem, and even worse one (remember Pool Of Radiance erasing the Window partition when uninstalling?). The “I Am An Engine Developer” high horse just doesn’t cut it, you should be the first to realize that the game being a console port has nothing to do with anything.
About the FOV : You are right, it’s an easy value to change. As such, what make you think that they didn’t change it out of laziness?
I hope that you realize that shit storms like this is the reason why game developers only care about people who play more than 3 meters away these days.
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>PC game obviously designed around a console
>Being a console port has nothing to do with it
How is it in fantasy land?
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“Tei, what is your take on Gearbox’s claim that Borderlands was developed for PC first and then ported to consoles?”
I will not say is a lie, and pure bullshit, because the world is byzarre like that, and maybe is true, but…
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DuckTyping
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“Lets see that list buddy. Cause im pretty sure i can explain why each of those games did if for you. Some people dont understand what peer to peer is, or what dedicated servers are, or network hosting is.”
Counter strike, Counter-strike source, TF2, L4D, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Quake Live, day of Defeat, Natural Selection, Arma 2, Killing Floor, RTCW, Stalker, Call of Duty 4, HLDM, TFC, Dawn of War.
There, please explain who those work out of the box (or the steam) for me.
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They work when trying to maintain a server for private games, or because they use dedicated servers setup by people who know what they are doing (or they wouldn’t be running a server)
I’ll have you note as well that nearly all the game in that list are listed on sites like portforward.com. So yes, someone, somewhere had to find those ports at some point because they were experiencing connection problems.
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Considering I was in the DoD, Red Orchestra (forgot to mention that), Natural Selection betas, and played CS from beta (8? I cant recall which), RTCW from launch, Stalker from when it was first multi, CoD4 on release (what a mistake that was, not a fun game for me), Dawn of War launch, TF2/L4D Launch… and never had to forward ports!
Also didn’t have to for the launch of whatever it was called Typhoon Rising. Cant recall the name.
I’ve mentioned it before, but the only game I’ve had to forward ports for was Rainbow Six, the first one. Seriously, you can say all the reasons you want I didn’t have to before, twenty+ years of gaming leads me to believe this isn’t just ‘my fault.’
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i see you have basically done dedicated server playing apparently. The fact is as gutter has said, most of those are on port forward. I am willing to bet that if you had tried the majority of those on peer to peer instead of a dedicated server, you would have had more problems.
You also might have the magical PC that doesnt have problems. I luckily have one of those also. The fact is that if those are listed on port forward, then obviously there might be some port problems for those games.
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““The port forwarding is actually pretty normal for hosting a PC game. It’s true of all source games (except for L4D) for example.”
There’s a reason L4D is an exception; no other Source games that I’m aware of are in any way geared towards playing locally hosted games. Sure, you can do it, but do you actually know anyone who plays locally hosted TF2 games on a regular basis? I don’t. The game should at least use UPnP.”
InvisibleJesus writes the truth, Hug. You’d do well to read it. The game is geared towards being playable by a group of four friends, rather than on a dedicated server. It ought to handle this so we don’t have to and make it play nice, like L4D does. UPnP would be a good start.
Incidentally, even when I forward my ports, my friends and I can’t all get in the same server. Bit of a shit launch, really.
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I'm seriously enjoying this too much to be upset about how sloppy the port it
At least it runs alright =)
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As much as I want to play the game and think it is a great game, I’m not going to play through it with the kind of distractions it forces on me. I’ll be waiting for a patch and hope Gearbox start immediately on making changes to the PC version that actually made it more PC-friendly once they’ve finished with the bugs.
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Oh and I just found this posted on Gearbox’s Boderlands forum:
“Gearbox’s Steve Gibson made an official announcement to Destructoid and stated that Borderlands would be released for download on Steam. Gibson also mentioned that the desktop release would include several features that will definitely not be seen on home console versions. Weapons can be exported via item cards in .jpg format, so if players collect a weapon of mass awesomeness that no one in their circle of friends has, they’ll be able to share it with them. In addition to that interesting feature, Borderlands for the PC will come with special menu and inventory systems designed exclusively around the mouse input option. Another little extra is the addition of timedemo benchmark software, which is exclusive to the PC. Last, but certainly not least, if played on a high-end system, the PC version of Borderlands will show off the most impressive graphics of all three versions of the game”
Don’t make meh angry on the internet. You won’t like meh when I’m angry…on the internet.
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Tweaking in-game settings comes with the territory of being a PC gamer. Fiddling with drivers comes with the territory of being a PC gamer. Going into the .ini files to make basic changes that actual PC games put in their damn menus does not. (Doing it for obscure hacks does, admittedly.) Keyboard centric and unalterable UI details do not. Port forwarding does not, not anymore – I’m sure, back in the bad old days of 1996 or whenever, it was a crucial skill, but it is simply not how most games handle things anymore. And, frankly, Borderlands PC multiplayer is borked even beyond simple port forwarding.
Ammo is not shared in multiplayer, btw, so autocollecting it would be bad. Money is and should be autocollected, though.
And speaking of unskippable movies – the logo parade can be dumped, thankfully, but if you take more than a few seconds to press enter/click, the intro movie of the game starts playing. And is at least a minute long. And you guessed it, -that- is also unskippable.
For people who are having trouble getting into multiplayer, GameRanger now supports Borderlands, and I hear it works beautifully.
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i hate to break it to you but, what l4d does is put your party in dedicated servers nearly all the time, that is why its easy to connect to.
I'm not saying that this game couldnt be enhanced further, but the problems alot of people are having involve drivers and problems with thier system, not always with the game. I'm sure there are tons of bugs that need to be fixed.
The days of pc only releases is basically over.
The intro movie is skippable, done it plenty of times. As for the other movies, i agree they should be skippable, and probably will be, but the first thing i did was delete them all before hand, like i do all my pc games.
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As people have mentioned, any game that uses a dedicated server will not require port forwarding, however it seems to me that peer to peer is becoming more and more common, so I’d suggest we’re going to see a lot more games become the victim of this sort of “Day One and I can’t play multi-player!” angst. Modern Warfare 2 will presumably be affected due to the lack of dedicated servers.
I’d be interested to know why there is a push towards peer to peer. I assume that it lowers the cost of the game post release for the publishers, and allows the game to live on past the point where no-one is willing to run servers anymore, but is that all there really is to it?
(and frankly I’d rather the L4D model as a solution to the later issue)
As an aside, if you are hosting Borderlands games without needing to have set up port forwarding on your modem/router/whatever, I’d suggest that the only thing between you and your PC getting raped by worms and script kiddies is the Windows firewall. I don’t know how secure the Vista/Win7 firewall is, but I know how secure every previous Microsoft OS has been when directly exposed to the internet, so I’ll stick with the occasional hassle of updating my router config…
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the l4d model is dedicated servers(there is an option to host locally, but it is then subject to port forwarding as it becomes peer to peer).
peer to peer has been the norm for rts games, and most rpg games that support online. Large fps games that a connect 32 or more players are for the most part all dedicated servers.
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Hug, I know how L4D works. I’ve clocked quite a bit of time on it. I’m aware that the default for L4D is to connect to a dedicated server. I’m also aware that if you choose to host locally, you can do so without forwarding ports. That’s a fact. Obviously using a dedicated server is preferable (my friends and I rent one out, actually), but you can host locally without port forwarding. Whether that’s because it uses UPnP or because of some Steam voodoo, I don’t know, I’m not a tech. But it works.
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Supposedly Half Life 2 (and presumably some other Source games) deliberately have a narrower FOV than is standard on PC first person shooters, something to do with how close you stand to NPCs?
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I don’t think people would be complaining too much about the port forwarding if the game didn’t persist in not working after they’d been forwarded.
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I totally would be. Port forwarding is an enormous pain in the ass, especially with my DSL modem/router’s terrible interface (I’d replace it if I could). And especially if you have to forward multiple noncontiguous ports.
But the part where even that doesn’t necessarily work is of course the worst part.
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You know, I can live with poor UIs, FoV problems, unskippable intro movies, poor voice chat and all the rest. It annoys me, but I can handle it.
What I can’t handle is that despite following the port forwarding instructions, I still can’t play online with my friends. That’s it, that’s the whole of it, just so long as I can get the multiplayer actually working the rest can go hang.
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Only the host needs to do the port forwarding, but the host MUST do it.
Make sure you deactivate/allow through Borderlands with any software firewalls too.
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Thanks for the links. The bEnableMouseSmoothing=True to false setting did wonders for me. As with all UT3 based games, i am less than happy about the framerates i’m getting. I’m playing with everything turned off except dynamic shadows on an amd x2 5000 with a fast gfx card Only way i could get a consistent 25+ fps. The UT3 engine just hates my hardware, always has. Just waiting for the i7′s to drop a little bit more in price.
The game is wonderful though. Finally something to play with my mates again, something i sorely missed since quitting wow.
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it is not possible for borderlands to work the way that l4d does then. L4d is using Steams match making service, unavailable to any one elses games.
Also of note. they have figured out how to disable black outlines. Its in the tweak thread the was linked.
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By the way, as much bitching as I’ve been doing about the state of the PC version (and that state is criminally underbaked), the game is a damn fine game in most respects. New guns can make for dramatic differences in play, battles are often intense and close-fought, death animations are superb, there’s tons of enemy variety even if so far that’s been within a few basic types, bosses are mostly epic…
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Oh yes from what little I’ve played, the game is great. Let me make this clear, I make no complaints at this time about the game.
It’s those bits in between me and the game that’s making me angry…on the internet.
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the jump tweak is a relief. i know that pandora isn’t earth, but everyting feels physically fine, or earth like, in the game, except for the jump.
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Nothin more to say other than toni is a dumbass.
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If anyone else is interested in creating private games, best way ive found to do it so far is using hamachi.
Create your own network etc, get your friends to join then whoever is hosting starts up their game first and creates a private game
Everyone else has to modify their desktop shortcuts in the properties and then the target, on the end of all the “*path to borderlands” put the ip from hamachi of the person hosting.
So
Say i was on the network, someone whose hamachi IP was 5.123.123.123 was hosting
and for some reason my borderlands exe was directly in c:\borderlands then my target should look like
“C:\borderlands\borderlands.exe” 5.123.123.123
When the other players start up the game they should get automatically joined to the game
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Vinraith says:
October 30, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I’d mainly be buying it to play with a friend, so the multiplayer connectivity stuff is a real concern.
Hopefully they’ll just get it all hammered out and it won’t be a thing.
Why let that stop you though? It’s a good game you can play with a friend… is forwarding ports that much of an issue that it’s going to stop you doing something that could be incredibly fun? COME ONNNNN, live a litte.
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I’m hearing about significant problems beyond port forwarding.
I’m also embroiled in a positively epic game of Sword of the Stars with said friend, so there’s no rush anyway.
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Aight.
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there are plenty of 3rd party programs that allow you to create your own lan game and share it with your friends that work just fine with borderlands.
the issues with connectivity are port forwarding. To many people dont realize that even if you open your ports, and you try to join a game of someone who didnt open thier ports, you cannot connect. He can join yours, but you cant join his.
Borderlands attracted a large population of younger gamers who have never actually experienced a p2p game, and you can see it in the forums.
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Because I can't seem to find a definitive answer out there – the tank melee damage upgrades – does it affect you when in berserk? It might seem like a silly question but I've yet to see a bit of text that says tank in berserk uses melee damage modifiers. I can make the connection to it helping when swinging a rifle butt (because the game calls that melee) but just unsure whether to go down that upgrade path…
Ta
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I’m just waiting for a mod to allow container support of some sort. What am I going to do with a level 25 rocket launcher when I’m only level 16?
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If anyone is having problems with hosting private games online (friends unable to follow invites, even if host has all ports opened) try this:
Host a public game, then close it. Now host your private game and invite away! Works for me and my mates.
Why does it work? I dunno, but I'm happy I found a simple workaround.
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I hate to say this, but you're probabyl best off selling it… Unless you can hand it off to a friendly mule character in multiplayer.
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both me and my friend enabled DMZ and both of us dont have any anti virus running or firewalls up. still couldnt connect to each other… how sad gamespy is
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Lan Works perfectly on this though, but you cant use hamatchi
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I have to say I had no significant problems using Hamachi for a 2 player game, though the additional latency it adds prevented us from adding more people without cripling lag.
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Try GameRanger for multiplayer. It works GREAT for me and my brother.
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A couple friends of mine have had success with Gameranger as well. I haven’t tried it yet, but based on their feedback I’d say give it a try if you really want to get your multiplayer on. Just be aware that everyone in the game needs to have it installed, not just the host.
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There is a weapons bank. Its in the Underdome. After you fast travel to the Underdome, look around by the vending machines. there is a room off to the side. Talk to the claptrap behind the cage. I think you need the Mad Moxxis DLC.
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