Bioshock 2 Fixes

Wow, some pretty strong words on the homepage, Kyle. I agree with you though, I think 2K really did a poor job porting the game from 360. I take it you haven't tried the multiplayer yet? (it gets worse: forced matchmaking, capped FPS, no text chat...) This game makes no effort to play to the strengths of the PC.

If I hadn't preordered on Steam and gotten a free copy of Bioshock 1 and $5 off, I would feel ripped off right now.
 
Something you guys might want to consider is that the default FOV likely applies to 16:9 from a design standpoint, so it's more a case of 4:3 getting vert+ and not 16:9 getting cropped, in the eyes of the developer. That's not to say it shouldn't assign the FOV parameter to the vertical axis, because I fully believe that's the better way to go.
 
Last edited:
Derangel said:
How does the mouse control feel to you, Kyle? Even at what is "acceptable" to me for playing the game (DPI at 400 on my Sidewinder and in-game sensitivity at 4) it still feels wrong. Kind of like I dunno, almost like what Halo 2 felt like playing with a mouse, but not quite as bad. And no matter what in the menus the mouse moves at super speed from left to right, even with the setting at 1 (though at 1 the point moves up and down as if it were stuck in thick honey).
Click to expand...


forced horizontal mouse acceleration.. gotta love console ports, eh?
 
Also you guys really are having mouse troubles? I play with it set to 5 and have mouse acceleration on, I use a Logitech MX518, but then again, I play CS Source with my mouse sensivity set to just a little bit over halfway. It feels pretty natural and the aiming is better than the first Bioshock game, but I wonder if that's more of a byproduct of the larger hit boxes (seems like it right?) and also the larger reticules for your weapons, the only one with a small reticule other than the remote dart gun is the spear gun, which is balanced by the fact that you can zoom in with it.
 
Fail said:
That made me laugh Kyle, yeah even with all the problems you guys are having, in the end, it's still a game, one that strives to surpass the original, but fails magnificently in that, but there was no shame in trying, but then again with a 3 year development cycle, they should have done better than they did with the issues you guys are having.

If there had never been another Bioshock, Bioshock would have stood on it's own merits as one of the best FPS games of all time, it didn't need a multiplayer to make it great, I wish they had spent more time on making the single player longer and better storywise. They did great on the action, the action is much better than the first game.

Out of curiousity, did you pay full price or did you get in on a 4 pack?
Click to expand...

I'd really like to know what they were working on for three years. The graphics are the same, worse at times, most of the character models look the same, levels probably have textures lifted from the previous game, its the same engine, three of the four studios working on the title had nothing to do with the MP (though I have no idea what 2K China was doing). It doesn't take three years to create a story and make a semi-short (according to reports) single-player mode.
 
Assuming the default horizontal FOV is 75, if you want to keep the same "focal length" as default, you might use:

5:4 // 56.7
4:3 // 59.8
16:10 // 69.3
16:9 // 75.0

3x 5:4 // 116.6
3x 4:3 // 119.8
3x 16:10 // 128.5
3x 16:9 // 133.0

3x 4:5 // 92.0
3x 3:4 // 88.3
3x 10:16 // 78.0
3x 9:16 // 72.1

What I don't get is that the game's official page suggests that it perfectly supports widescreen by defining the FOV on the vertical axis, but I guess it failed to make the shipped game?
 
Nihilanth99 said:
Assuming the default horizontal FOV is 75, if you want to keep the same "focal length" as default, you might use:

5:4 // 56.7
4:3 // 59.8
16:10 // 69.3
16:9 // 75.0

3x 5:4 // 116.6
3x 4:3 // 119.8
3x 16:10 // 128.5
3x 16:9 // 133.0

3x 4:5 // 92.0
3x 3:4 // 88.3
3x 10:16 // 78.0
3x 9:16 // 72.1

What I don't get is that the game's official page suggests that it perfectly supports widescreen by defining the FOV on the vertical axis, but I guess it failed to make the shipped game?
Click to expand...

Elizabeth posted on the Cult of Rapture that the team fixed a last second bug related to the widescreen issue that caused the game to revert to Vert- right before it shipped (a week or two prior to launch, at minimum). Don't know whether to believe it or not, but its all we've got to go on.
 
Yeah the game was on the short side, I think I spent 8-10 hours on it, on Easy. I took my time enjoying the world of Rapture. It's pretty immersive if you allow yourself to be immersed. It's too easy to sit there and pick over the failings of a game. I'm a very harsh critic when I don't like something, there's just something about this game that silences my inner critic and allows me to just sit there and enjoy the experience. Maybe it's the fact that with all the ice and snow we've had here in Arkansas the past few days, I've been able to take a break from college and work to just immerse myself in a game. If it hadn't been this game, it'd have been Dragon Age Origins for sure. I don't feel like the level design was bad by any means, I thought it was better than the original. I just think the story needed to be better than what it is. Like I said, the action is fast and frantic, I like it, there's almost no let up in it.

I just wish they left out multiplayer, Bioshock doesn't need multiplayer to be a great game. That was wasted time there. They probably didn't want to get bad reviews for not including multiplayer, but their multiplayer isn't good to be honest . . . I tried it earlier and I was plagued by lag and I couldn't see the animations of my plasmids or weapons firing which makes things confusing because you don't know if you've hit someone or not untill either you're dead or they are.
 
Fail said:
Yeah the game was on the short side, I think I spent 8-10 hours on it, on Easy. I took my time enjoying the world of Rapture. It's pretty immersive if you allow yourself to be immersed. It's too easy to sit there and pick over the failings of a game. I'm a very harsh critic when I don't like something, there's just something about this game that silences my inner critic and allows me to just sit there and enjoy the experience. Maybe it's the fact that with all the ice and snow we've had here in Arkansas the past few days, I've been able to take a break from college and work to just immerse myself in a game. If it hadn't been this game, it'd have been Dragon Age Origins for sure. I don't feel like the level design was bad by any means, I thought it was better than the original. I just think the story needed to be better than what it is. Like I said, the action is fast and frantic, I like it, there's almost no let up in it.

I just wish they left out multiplayer, Bioshock doesn't need multiplayer to be a great game. That was wasted time there. They probably didn't want to get bad reviews for not including multiplayer, but their multiplayer isn't good to be honest . . . I tried it earlier and I was plagued by lag and I couldn't see the animations of my plasmids or weapons firing which makes things confusing because you don't know if you've hit someone or not untill either you're dead or they are.
Click to expand...

The first Bioshock was that way too. Looking past the many technical problems the game has, the gameplay itself isn't bad. Sure it feels almost exactly like the original (both the good and that bad), but the original was fun for the two times I played (second time was only to get the other ending) . I haven't touched it since that though. I've tried at various time, but was never able to draw myself back into the world of Rapture. I'm having a hard time getting drawn into this game with the other issues. Before the fix the FOV problems forced me to play with one monitor to even make the game appear semi-playable. Going to one monitor was maddening. It felt like I was missing 2/3rds of the game. However, the terrible FOV made the game look god awful at Eyefinity resolutions (the new FOV doesn't make it looks much better). I'm not a graphics whore by any means, but the textures in the game seriously look like they're from Doom 3 most of the time. That is unacceptable for a 2010 title that is being billed as AAA.
 
Fail said:
Yeah the game was on the short side, I think I spent 8-10 hours on it, on Easy. I took my time enjoying the world of Rapture. It's pretty immersive if you allow yourself to be immersed. It's too easy to sit there and pick over the failings of a game. I'm a very harsh critic when I don't like something, there's just something about this game that silences my inner critic and allows me to just sit there and enjoy the experience. Maybe it's the fact that with all the ice and snow we've had here in Arkansas the past few days, I've been able to take a break from college and work to just immerse myself in a game. If it hadn't been this game, it'd have been Dragon Age Origins for sure. I don't feel like the level design was bad by any means, I thought it was better than the original. I just think the story needed to be better than what it is. Like I said, the action is fast and frantic, I like it, there's almost no let up in it.

I just wish they left out multiplayer, Bioshock doesn't need multiplayer to be a great game. That was wasted time there. They probably didn't want to get bad reviews for not including multiplayer, but their multiplayer isn't good to be honest . . . I tried it earlier and I was plagued by lag and I couldn't see the animations of my plasmids or weapons firing which makes things confusing because you don't know if you've hit someone or not untill either you're dead or they are.
Click to expand...



I was told the multiplayer was made by a different developer (like what happened wiht the new wolfenstein) so the MP didint affect the SP developers.
 
One word bro: Consolitis

BUT, even though I agree with you about graphics and it's using an old engine, the game itself is what I focus on. I noticed a glitch where I had my keys set to custom bindingds, I tabbed out, when I came back in, I was unable to loot from certain stuffs laying around, so I reset my bindings to default and that problem went away. That was a weird glitch. But even with that I didn't let it detract from the game, I just simply got used to playing it the way they defaulted it.

It does feel like there's a little bit of the same in the game like where you go, you get X of this, or you go to X place to get X item, then return to Y place to do Z.

It's not bad though, the action is what makes the game better than the first. The first had good action but the controls felt like shit. I think the second one improves on it with better mouse controls and better aiming simply by expanding the hit boxes and having larger reticules.

It sucks you guys have problems with it. FWIW, i'm playing on a laptop from 2008, a Gateway 7811-FX and I've only had graphical slowdown when there's way too much going on onscreen during crowded fight scenes, other than that it plays like butter, I have vsync turned off and I'm playing at 1920x1200.
 
The hack key getting unbound isn't a bug. It's just displayed incorrectly on the screen. Just use the mouse. not a Key.
 
Fail said:
The. Multiplayer. Sucks.
Click to expand...

ya,t he multiplayer sint that great but tis ok, played about 3 games (all 10 player TD), non of them lagged at all.

had a good moment, got the big daddy suit and all 5 enemies were on a stair case ducking and shooting at me, shot 3 proxy mines at them and killed them all lol. Then owned face with the rivet gun for antoher 10 kills, rivet gun in MP seems way to strong lol. Went from half way through rank 1 to half way through rank 3 thanks to that round.
 
Fail said:
One word bro: Consolitis

BUT, even though I agree with you about graphics and it's using an old engine, the game itself is what I focus on. I noticed a glitch where I had my keys set to custom bindingds, I tabbed out, when I came back in, I was unable to loot from certain stuffs laying around, so I reset my bindings to default and that problem went away. That was a weird glitch. But even with that I didn't let it detract from the game, I just simply got used to playing it the way they defaulted it.

It does feel like there's a little bit of the same in the game like where you go, you get X of this, or you go to X place to get X item, then return to Y place to do Z.

It's not bad though, the action is what makes the game better than the first. The first had good action but the controls felt like shit. I think the second one improves on it with better mouse controls and better aiming simply by expanding the hit boxes and having larger reticules.

It sucks you guys have problems with it. FWIW, i'm playing on a laptop from 2008, a Gateway 7811-FX and I've only had graphical slowdown when there's way too much going on onscreen during crowded fight scenes, other than that it plays like butter, I have vsync turned off and I'm playing at 1920x1200.
Click to expand...

The fix I posted for hacking should be able to be adapted for looting as well. I'll keep my eyes open for one that is specifically for looting though.

Normally graphics don't bother me, there is just something about this game that does. Doesn't help that I feel like I'm playing a console shooter even though I'm using proper FPS controls. I tend to hate (well severely dislike) console shooters. I'm fine with ports as long as the mouse acceleration is acceptable (see: RE5, Dead Space with vSync off) when its not (this game, Halo 2) it drives me nuts every second. If the game had gamepad support I'd probably plug my controller in and see if it felt better and then likely been pissed when it most likely did (like I was with Halo 2, even though I played through the game with the controller).
 
I don't understand what you guys mean by bad mouse acceleration because I'm not experiencing that, do you guys have the sensivity set to like really low or something?

Also i notice a lot of you guys have your acceleration set to off, i had mine set to on, what difference is all that supposed to make? It took me a few mins to find a comfort zone, once I found it I left it unchanged the whole game and had no problems playing through it like that.
 
Fail said:
I don't understand what you guys mean by bad mouse acceleration because I'm not experiencing that, do you guys have the sensivity set to like really low or something?

Also i notice a lot of you guys have your acceleration set to off, i had mine set to on, what difference is all that supposed to make? It took me a few mins to find a comfort zone, once I found it I left it unchanged the whole game and had no problems playing through it like that.
Click to expand...

The best example of it I can give is this: When I'm in the menu for the game my mouse pointer moves from left to right extremely fast. Small movements will send it across all three screens (or across the sole screen when its set to 1680x1050). This happens no matter what setting I pick. In game, with everything at default (which is usually way too slow for me) the game moves super quick. Knocking the DPI on my mouse down to 400 makes it better, but dropping the in-game setting to 4 makes its playable along with the low DPI. Now that this into consideration: My normal computer use is done at 800 DPI. Gaming is usually at 1200DPI. So its a drastic speed drop to make the game playable for me.

This doesn't seem to be an issue everyone is having however.
 
Remember that you want a different FOV for different aspect ratio screens.

90 degrees was fairly standard for 4:3 monitors but you need a little more when running widescreen variants to make it look correct.

For 16:10 widescreen the 90 degree equivelent is about 100 degrees
For 16:9 widescreen the 90 degree equivelent is about 106 degrees
For 16:3 (thats eyefinity with 3x 16:9 monitors) the 90 degree equivelent is 152 degrees

To work out FOV you can use the WSGF FOV calculator or do the maths yourself if you know a bit of trigenometry :)
 
Last edited:
PrincessFrosty said:
Remember that you want a different FOV for different aspect ratio screens.

90 degreens was fairly standard for 4:3 monitors but you need a little more when running widescreen variants to make it look correct.

For 16:10 widescreen the 90 degree equivelent is about 100 degrees
For 16:9 widescreen the 90 degree equivelent is about 106 degrees
For 16:3 (thats eyefinity with 3x 16:9 monitors) the 90 degree equivelent is 152 degrees

To work out FOV you can use the WSGF FOV calculator or do the maths yourself if you know a bit of trigenometry :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing this all out. I added it to the first post so people can see it when they go to set their FOV with the fix.
 
I had the lulz with teh article

seriously what is so interesting in this game that warrant a purchase in the first place everything in the game sucks I still fail to understand how this shit became critically accepted.

The story is like: yeah i dont know what the fux is happening but Im at this underwater thing its cool , ohh who cares man this bland and generic

aww please


the genre after doom2 pretty much went downhill (few exceptions here and there)

imho
 
almost every game you see now was built from the ground up on a console, 360 or ps3. You do some browsing in pc games and youll find tons of garbage code from 360 and ps3 as well. It is damn hard to find a pc game that was meant for pc anymore. Im sick of the leftovers, we get shit on everytime you turn around from developers cutting corners and sending out shovel ware.
 
EvilNando said:
I had the lulz with teh article

seriously what is so interesting in this game that warrant a purchase in the first place everything in the game sucks I still fail to understand how this shit became critically accepted.

The story is like: yeah i dont know what the fux is happening but Im at this underwater thing its cool , ohh who cares man this bland and generic

aww please


the genre after doom2 pretty much went downhill (few exceptions here and there)

imho
Click to expand...

After reading your post, it's pretty easy to see how you can fail to appreciate games like Bioshock
 
Fail said:
After reading your post, it's pretty easy to see how you can fail to appreciate games like Bioshock
Click to expand...

cant agree more

edit: by looking at your sig: do yourself a favor, go and play ME2 then we can talk more about "game appreciation"
 
All this talk about broken FOV, but was anyone able to get AA to work? Mine doesn't seem to be working. I also hate how every time I launch the game; I always have to go back and turn vSync off. That's not annoying at all.:rolleyes:
 
I've played about 5 hours worth so far with default FOV and using my MX518 at 1600 DPI and I've had no issues. People crying foul over ports is nothing new, just be glad its something small and not CTDs or worse which is par for the course in many games (including PC only ones).
 
I'd like to point out that the default FOV, if it really is 75, is wrong for ALL monitors.

For a 4:3 monitor, the old style monitors, it should be 90. It should be larger for wider screen monitors.

The reason why many game developers set a default of 75 is that it is a cheap way of getting high frame rates. 75/360 is less than 90/360. You're seeing a smaller portion of what's going on, so there is less graphics processing to do and you get a higher frame rate.

But it looks like crap. Of course, console players are used to bending over and taking whatever they get, so they don't notice the difference.
 
I have my mouse aiming and FOV set perfect for me.

I went into User.ini and replaced all instances of "Speed=2000" with "Speed=500".

This slowed the mouse aiming down and greatly nullified the acceleration. I had to crank the in-game sensitivity up to 5 to compensate. Now the aim is slow enough to be controllable, but not too slow. It's as fluid as any other FPS I've played now. I have a Logitech G500 running at 5700dpi.

I set my FOV to 110, which gave a slight tunnel vision effect. I find that his helps me aim a lot better since the center of rotation of the camera is behind me instead of on top of me. I play RTCW:ET with 110 FOV so I'm really used to it. On top of that vsync is disabled so I get absolutely no mouse lag at all.


The only real thing I have a problem with now is the apparent lack of crossfire support, at least for the 4870 x2. I get flickering and jumping polygons all over the place when I disable vsync with Cat AI enabled. This is the only game that this is a problem with...
 
I was seriously thinking about getting this game ($50 now), but after reading Kyle's articles and this thread I think I'll save my money. :(
 
CompuG##K said:
I have my mouse aiming and FOV set perfect for me.

I went into User.ini and replaced all instances of "Speed=2000" with "Speed=500".

This slowed the mouse aiming down and greatly nullified the acceleration. I had to crank the in-game sensitivity up to 5 to compensate. Now the aim is slow enough to be controllable, but not too slow. It's as fluid as any other FPS I've played now. I have a Logitech G500 running at 5700dpi.
Click to expand...


OMG YES! Thanks for the mouse speed tip! Works great, feels right now. Got mine at 4 sensitivity and can control it so much better.

Tip: Drop the .ini into Word to edit all changes at once, there are like 90+ instances of it referenced.
 
Derangel said:
Elizabeth posted on the Cult of Rapture that the team fixed a last second bug related to the widescreen issue that caused the game to revert to Vert- right before it shipped (a week or two prior to launch, at minimum). Don't know whether to believe it or not, but its all we've got to go on.
Click to expand...
I think it's bullshit. They're talking about a bug totally redefining how the field of view is defined? Why would there be code that referred to the "old way" in the first place, and what kind of insane bug would mysteriously trigger Code X instead of Code Y?

Nah, sorry -- not a chance. I don't buy a word of it.
 
You know not to shit on anyones parade especially since I passed on Bioshock 2. I did however buy Bioshock 1 on release day 2 years ago and was rather pissed about the FOV issues back then. My point is while I'm glad this is front page news here and I'm glad the devs are being called out, like the schmucks they are, and it's getting alot of attention, etc etc; why haven't I seen this before on the front page? I can't help but think to myself as I read that this morning. I mean seriously this is hardly the first game to fuck up the PC gamers experience and yet I have never seen, that I can recall, it being front page news with Kyle (or whoever wrote that editorial) asking for their money back. I mean god I'm glad but I would like to see this become a trend here. I realize it's probably because eyefinity has found a home here at [H] and it's alot more pronounced when gaming at that res across 3 monitors but i say agin this is like the 10000th time I have seen and been pissed myself about how devs couldn't give a shit about their pc gaming customers. We are simply an afterthought and looked upon as gravy money and minimal or little resouces/time are spent on us. Either because we A. are all pirates or B. those of us who do buy games are eclipsed 100 times by the console sales of the same game.

Anyway kudos to Kyle and company for calling them out publicly and on the front page but I hope to see this more often because this happens all the time. Thoughts?
 
phide said:
I think it's bullshit. They're talking about a bug totally redefining how the field of view is defined? Why would there be code that referred to the "old way" in the first place, and what kind of insane bug would mysteriously trigger Code X instead of Code Y?

Nah, sorry -- not a chance. I don't buy a word of it.
Click to expand...

Been holding my tongue on this, but I am with you bro.
 
Savoy said:
I realize it's probably because eyefinity has found a home here at [H] and it's alot more pronounced when gaming at that res across 3 monitors but i say agin this is like the 10000th time I have seen and been pissed myself about how devs couldn't give a shit about their pc gaming customers.
Click to expand...

You are correct all the way around. I think I am going to be more vocal about this stuff going forward, because sitting on our hands in the press and excepting it quietly is getting us no where. Please keep in mind though, we have to pick and choose our battles.
 
I find it amusing how this was complained about so much in the original game that they somehow "missed" putting it this game. There was quite a large shitstorm after the first game shipped and im pretty sure it was a third party that ended up making a fix for it, cant remember if 2k ever made an "official" fix.

Pretty much a sure sign that they don't listen to what their pc customers want, just crank it out for the console, port it for pc and forget about it. These wankers don't deserve our money, the pc community for most devs seems to be an afterthought these days :(
 
probably has to do with the x360 frames like some poster around here expressed

unless they ship a patch for the xbox as well (very unlikely)
 
meme said:
I'd like to point out that the default FOV, if it really is 75, is wrong for ALL monitors.

For a 4:3 monitor, the old style monitors, it should be 90. It should be larger for wider screen monitors.

The reason why many game developers set a default of 75 is that it is a cheap way of getting high frame rates. 75/360 is less than 90/360. You're seeing a smaller portion of what's going on, so there is less graphics processing to do and you get a higher frame rate.

But it looks like crap. Of course, console players are used to bending over and taking whatever they get, so they don't notice the difference.
Click to expand...
No. There is nothing special about 90 at 4:3. Yes, lots of games used it, but this is a design decision. To assume that there is some geometric precision between 90 and 4:3 is wrong.

Narrower FOV can be used to enhance claustrophobic feel, make aiming a little easier, make things easier to see from a distance, among other things. Playing a driving game at 90/4:3, for instance, sucks compared to a lower one.

Play with a higher FOV if that's what you like, but don't tell the developer that FOV 75 is wrong.
 
I paid for it. It is wrong. FOV is wrong. "Widescreen" support is wrong. Eyefinity support is wrong. Textures are wrong. Mouse function is wrong. And the title of the game is wrong. This is not BioShock 2, this is BioShock 1.5.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top