Porting Disaster: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
(Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0) |
No edit summary |
||
Line 16:
** Inconsistent or perpetually slow frame-rates.
** [[Loads and Loads of Loading|Ridiculously long loading times]], given the complexity of the program.
Keep in mind that many of the so-called "ports" are, strictly speaking, not true ports but are more properly classified as "conversions" or "adaptations". Such "ports" are commonplace during the late 70s to the early 2000s due in no small part to drastic differences between consoles from different manufacturers (with some exceptions such as the [[Colecovision]] and [[Other Sega Systems|SG-1000]] being essentially identical to each other; while most systems do share the same main CPU, they very greatly in terms of graphics and sound generation). You'd often hear many a YouTuber conflate the word "port" for a mechanically-unrelated version of an existing game on a different platform, like in the case of one channel describing a [[Game Boy Color]] adaptation of a ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' game as a "port" of the arcade original, despite sharing next to no code or assets with its arcade sibling. For a game to qualify as a port or conversion in a strict sense, it has to share assets with the original game if the game's code was rewritten for the target platform, albeit adapted or edited to account for any limitations, c.f. ''[[Doom]]'' for the Super Nintendo which used a wholly different engine but with assets taken from the original incarnation.
See also [[Polished Port]], where a game is greatly improved during the development of a ported version.
Line 529 ⟶ 531:
** The game supports a pathetically-low selection of resolutions, not even including full HD or 16:10 resolutions. This is remedied by editing the game's .INI file. Ubisoft's entire team of programmers apparently couldn't figure this out.
*** Some allege that the PC version is prohibited from maximum graphical detail to make the 360 version appear better, as editing the INI files can also result in improved graphics. Until a patch, it was not even possible to enable anti-aliasing (mind you, that's ''all'' that patch did).
** The "Kinshasa, Part 2" mission is almost guaranteed to crash every time you load a saved game. So ''you'd better be good at it.''
** The game would even freeze for no evident reason when viewing some of the training videos for the Versus multiplayer.
* The first two ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' games [[Technology Marches On|eventually]] became this, as the first game and ''Pandora Tomorrow'' were direct ports of the original Xbox releases, supporting a form of shadow mapping called "shadow buffers", first supported on the GeForce 3 and the NV2A GPU used on the console. Shadow buffers were later deprecated (and in the case of ATI, were never supported at all), leading to the game being nigh unplayable as lights and shadows–which are a crucial part of ''Splinter Cell''{{'}}s gameplay–are missing on ATI graphics cards and later Nvidia hardware. The first game does have a fallback mode for ATI/AMD hardware and later Nvidia cards, but ''Pandora Tomorrow'' only supported shadow buffers, which accounts for why ''Pandora'' is to this day unavailable through digital distribution. There is however a [http://www.jiri-dvorak.cz/scellpt/ fix] for both games, fortunately.
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'' for the PC isn't technically a port, but it's obvious that it was designed for consoles first (a trend that started with [[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion|Oblivion]], which also had some odd porting decisions.) The developers apparently never considered that players might want to actually use their mouse, so most of the menus are operated using only the keyboard. Many of the multifunction keys either partially fail or stop working completely if you attempt to remap them, and the UI does not update to reflect the fact that you've changed them!
* Despite being a simultaneous release rather than a port, ''[[Crysis (series)|Crysis]] 2'' certainly counts. True, despite being greeted with a mix of legitimate rage over gamebreaking bugs and just plain [[Fan Dumb]], it was a fairly well-made game. The multi-player, however, was horribly broken. Crytek essentially put in ''no anti-cheating measures whatsoever'', to the point that players can simply edit their game data files to give themselves infinite nanosuit energy or bullets that do 100000 damage per shot. On top of the fact that the initial demo release of the game lacked any support for fine-grain adjustment of graphics settings.
* Also being simultaneous releases rather than ports, [[Obsidian Entertainment|ObsidianEntertainment's]] [[Dungeon Siege|Dungeon Siege III]] and [[BioWare|BioWare's]] [[Dragon Age II]] are considered by many to count for some of the same reasons:
** Broken gameplay mechanics that don't bother to hide the fact that games were developed for consoles.
Line 541 ⟶ 544:
** Pacing and level design fitted to meet hardware requirements of consoles as well as functionality of the controllers.
* After being delayed for well over an ''entire month'', the PC version of ''[[Batman: Arkham City]]'' has ridiculously unoptimized graphical settings, forces Direct X 11 despite its infamous bugginess, contains crippling DRM and sometimes has problems with connecting to GFWL for absolutely no reason.
* The PC release of ''[[Tangled]]'' was left with a half-assed co-op mode where for some strange reason, ''only the second player'' can use a controller while player one is forced to make do with a keyboard. Pity the poor little girl whose dexterity is not that refined enough to play as Rapunzel using the WASD keyboard control scheme (you can, however, adjust the default keyboard mapping, though), as what Steam reviews from disgruntled parents can attest—apparently, the porting house responsible for the Windows conversion forgot to note that the game's target audience is ''small children'', not first-person shooter players. And to add insult to injury, the Windows release was left unpatched at 1.0, effectively abandoning it soon after release. Sure, it is a tie-in game, but they shouldn't have released it on Steam at all if they left it at such a sorry state. Though if there is any consolation, a rudimentary online co-op mode is available on the Steam release of the game via Steam Remote Play Together, and best of all, it doesn't require the second player to own a copy of the game, either.
* ''[[Cars 2]]'' and ''[[Toy Story 3]]'' for Windows were based on the cut-down ports of their respective Wii versions, as opposed to the similar but arguably superior Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases. A number of levels and cutscenes were omitted, and that's even when a low-end family computer could shrug off those removed levels at low settings anyway.
{{reflist}}
| |||