Bioshock 2 Fixes

Derangel said:
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.
Click to expand...

LOLOL I completely agree. I played for an hour (on a single screen, grrr) and couldn't work out what the fuss was about this game. It looks like a mod. I would even believe it if someone said the maps were procedurally generated using random rooms and corridors from the original game.

Same old boring NPC's from the original too, which had like.. three enemy types the entire game. Bzzzt, zap with lightning, bop on head with spanner/drill. £29.99? Are you having a laugh, 2k?
 
I can not say I am too happy and my review will reflect this.


I have 2 5970's in CF..

I have 3 dell 3008wfp monitors. I am trying to run Eyefinity.

issues I have
1) Crap for eyefinity for 3x30" landscape. Does not work.
2) No crossfire support
3) no quad crossfire support
4) FOV guess it was ment to be a console game... F U 2k games..



I bought all this gear so I could play, test, bench and review GAMES.

Not only does this make me mad that eyefinity does not work, I am also steamed that I can only use one 30" display and it is wrong due to it being a 16:10 display.. This is not 5 years ago when widescreen has just started to come out.


They should have leaned a big lesson from the first bioshock and FOV F### up.


Don't buy the game I bought it and it is too late for me. For you if you have not bought the game.. Save your money.
 
Last edited:
Nihilanth99 said:
No. There is nothing special about 90 at 4:3. Yes, lots of games used it, but this is a design decision.
Click to expand...
For what it's worth, as part of John Carmack's research for Quake, he spent a lot of time determining which FOV he found ideal, not from the perspective of gameplay immersiveness but to find an FOV that had the least chance of introducing nausea. He settled on 90 HFOV, which worked pretty well for 4:3 displays. I play Fallout 3 with an 83 HFOV and find it reasonable, so there's certainly a pretty wide range for which to define the HFOV. I'd say that anything within the range of 83 to 95 is actually perfectly reasonable for 4:3.

70 is way out of that range. You lose the rotational distortion, yeah, but you also dramatically increase the potential for nauseousness. It's not a good trade-off.
 
Fail said:
you're saying that Blizzard doesn't produce good PC games? lol
Click to expand...

Hard to say... since the only 'modern' PC game from Blizzard is WOW... and I won't touch on that particular game.

The older games didn't really have to deal with stuff like eyefinity or widescreen for that matter. Even Warcraft 3 stretches on widescreens.
 
Is Mouse Acceleration still forced on like the original?

Sounds like again, they just took a 360 game and made a crappy PC port that feels like it shouldn't be played on a computer.
 
Try this:

Tthey seem to make it a little better visually, but there are still tons of textures that look blurry. Also, most props that are not dynamic (movable) STILL do not give shadows.

*Bioshock2SP.ini changes:*

DefaultPlatform=PC
(from none)

Under "[WinDrv.WindowsClient]":
TextureDetailInterface=UltraHigh
TextureDetailTerrain=UltraHigh
TextureDetailWeaponSkin=UltraHigh
TextureDetailPlayerSkin=UltraHigh
TextureDetailWorld=UltraHigh
TextureDetailRenderMap=UltraHigh
TextureDetailLightmap=UltraHigh
(texture settings from normal to ultrahigh; lightmap from normal to ultrahigh, like the xbox/ps3 settings!)

TextureDetail=UltraHigh
FluidSurfaceDetail=UltraHigh
DynamicShadowDetail=UltraHigh
(were high high medium)

LevelOfAnisotropy=8
(from 4, is in two spots)

Did it make a difference for you guys?

Also change:

ReduceMouseLag=False
(from True, in two spots)

I also changed the
CacheSizeMegs=64
(from 32 in 2 spots, since it wouldn't hurt if we have several gigs)
 
Last edited:
I just made the above changes and did some side-by-side shots quickly and could see no differences.
 
Jaerb4 said:
Is Mouse Acceleration still forced on like the original?
Click to expand...

That (and the mediocre gameplay) killed B1 for me. What is up with the increasingly common inability to get simple mouse support right? Developers managed perfectly well for years, and now every AAA title seems to screw it up. Even the otherwise sublime ME2 has issues in that department.

I still don't agree with the "everything must be horizontal+" argument (eyefinity aside, would people even be bitching about that if 2K had simply implemented a more sensible fov to start with? Well, yes, I expect they would), but it's staggering that they used the same fov again after all the crap they took first time around. It screams "lazy PC port".
 
phide said:
For what it's worth, as part of John Carmack's research for Quake, he spent a lot of time determining which FOV he found ideal, not from the perspective of gameplay immersiveness but to find an FOV that had the least chance of introducing nausea. He settled on 90 HFOV, which worked pretty well for 4:3 displays. I play Fallout 3 with an 83 HFOV and find it reasonable, so there's certainly a pretty wide range for which to define the HFOV. I'd say that anything within the range of 83 to 95 is actually perfectly reasonable for 4:3.

70 is way out of that range. You lose the rotational distortion, yeah, but you also dramatically increase the potential for nauseousness. It's not a good trade-off.
Click to expand...

That's interesting to know.

Basically the way I understand it is that you have a natural FOV with your monitor, if you take the distance from the player from the screen, and the width of the screen you can work out your natural FOV with the screen.

PC gamers tend to sit close to their screen and require higher FOVs to feel more natural, where as console gamers tend to sit much further from their screen and so the field of view with the screen is naturally much smaller. it's also naturally beneficial to consoles to render less in the scene because of their lack of processing/rendering power.

Having a smaller FOV than your natural FOV between the screen and you is cause for the claustrophobic feel, having a wider FOV is naturally beneficial in the game itself, it means less rotation is needed and more information is displayed.

90 degrees is a particuarly good number because games still have a lot of 90 degree corners in their play area and to allow players to cover their own ass it's often best to seek a corner for defence/camping, when you're at 65/70 degrees you can't quite see down each wall and thats quite uncomfortable as a tactical position. One of the great changes when I finally went from 4:3 to 16:10 widescreen was the ability to sit in a corner and clearly see down each wall for enemies when runnning an FOV of about 100 degrees.

Nothing about 90 degrees is particuarly "standard", which is why it's not inlcuded in PCGamingStandards, but it's been used by a lot of FPS games for a long time and only with the introduction of cross platform games with consoles have we seen it drop.

It's really a bit worrying that developers clearly either do not understand or care about this concept, it's integral to making a good game, just like with mouse acceleration or forced vsync...these options affect the entire game from start to finish and can turn a great game in to a terrible experience for many.
 
I agree that it basically has to do with sitting on the couch vs. sitting at your desk. Console FPS generally use lower FOV to let players see things at larger angular magnification from a distance, whereas PC players sitting at their desks can take a higher angle to get a better view of things, while having the close up detail to make out objects at distance.

I'd be careful, though, talking about natural FOVs given a particular screen at a particular distance, because those subtended angles are far smaller than you might imagine (anyone want to play at FOV 51.4? (30" 16:10 viewed from 2 feet)). They're suitable to use in stuff like flight and driving sims, or when you have a very large/encompassing display.
 
I support the suggestion that was made a while back, for multiplatform, make it on pc then port it to consoles. This gives us pur proper mouse controls, textures that don't like a 2 year old was fucking around in paint, and they have no excuse for proper widescreen. Everything else can be altered for the 360 and ps3, doesnt take that much effort to downsize a textures clarity, much easier to adapt mouse controls to a joypad rather than vice versa.

What downsides for console users would this approach have?
 
Chris_B said:
I support the suggestion that was made a while back, for multiplatform, make it on pc then port it to consoles. This gives us pur proper mouse controls, textures that don't like a 2 year old was fucking around in paint, and they have no excuse for proper widescreen. Everything else can be altered for the 360 and ps3, doesnt take that much effort to downsize a textures clarity, much easier to adapt mouse controls to a joypad rather than vice versa.

What downsides for console users would this approach have?
Click to expand...

That's the wrong question. The question is what downsides does this have for the developers and publishers, and there are a few (all relate to $$). Specifically, they can develop on one platform and be 99.9% sure it will look and work the same for all users of the console. They don't have to QA multiple configurations. And right now the console market is just more profitable than PC's (WoW being the exception), so that's what they'll target first and foremost.

I'm not saying I agree with it, but from a financial standpoint, it makes sense.
 
WhiteZero said:
I think the extra Anisotropy makes a small difference, but the "UltraHigh" does nothing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I just found out that the .ini file automatically reverts back to Normal from UltraHigh after exiting the game. I'm gonna make the file "read-only" and see if it can force the game to run at ultrahigh.. hehe (I'm dreaming stupid).
 
The FOV fix, and the Walk Toggle fix, as outlined in Derangel's initial post, took me literally 1 minute to do, and both had a major impact on the gameplay. For me, the game looks way better at FOV 110, and the walk toggle has made all the difference... now if 2K would just give us back our 360 controller support... I can live with this though... definitely. I'm really looking forward to playing tonight now.

Only problem now is I haven't finished Dragon Age yet, and I've barely even started Mass Effect 2!
 
Bo_Fox said:
Also, most props that are not dynamic (movable) STILL do not give shadows.
Click to expand...
It's rather interesting how visual effects we experienced in 2006 are curiously absent from this AAA FPS game released in 2010, ain't it? :)
 
phide said:
It's rather interesting how visual effects we experienced in 2006 are curiously absent from this AAA FPS game released in 2010, ain't it? :)
Click to expand...

I'm still amused that HL2 has some of the best facial animation in any game. You'd think developers would want to improve this stuff.
 
I didn't have a problem, I didn't think anything about the FOV until I saw it on here.
 
DugeHong said:
I didn't have a problem, I didn't think anything about the FOV until I saw it on here.
Click to expand...

same here man, same here, didn't stop me from having fun.

If nobody knew about this FOV stuff I'm sure they'd say the same thing we are.
 
Fail said:
same here man, same here, didn't stop me from having fun.

If nobody knew about this FOV stuff I'm sure they'd say the same thing we are.
Click to expand...

I noticed it the very moment I was given control of my character. Hell I can notice it quite clearly at a more normal resolution like 1680x1050. Just because you can't notice when a game has low FOV (not an insult) doesn't mean that no one else can.
 
I am having a problem that is making the game ubplayable.

No matter what I set my sensitivity to, it is always too high.
I set windows sensitivity to the lowest, set my mouse DPI to the lowest and ingame sensitivity to 1.

I have to scroll about 2-3ft just to get across my screen, but after I get ingame and move slighly the mouse sensitivity seems way too high. I move 1.5in and my character does a complete 360.
In every other game the sensitivity is PERFECT.

I hate this and it is frustrating me because I cant play.
Am I the only one experiencing this weird high ingame sensitivity and extremely low menu sensitivity?
 
if you re-read my post, it becomes a little more clear what i'm getting at
 
Ron FTL said:
I am having a problem that is making the game ubplayable.
Click to expand...

I find I have to reset the sensitivity once in awhile. Just choose another sensitivity, hit apply. Then choose the sensitivity you desire and hit apply again. I play at sensitivity 1 and it's still way too sensitive for me.
 
dopee123 said:
I find I have to reset the sensitivity once in awhile. Just choose another sensitivity, hit apply. Then choose the sensitivity you desire and hit apply again. I play at sensitivity 1 and it's still way too sensitive for me.
Click to expand...

Someone posted a good fix for the mouse acceleration problem on a previous page. I'm gonna find it again and add it to the first post.

Edit: Found and added.
 
Glad I did not plan on getting this game until I'm done building my new system some time in March. Hopefully there will be a proper fix by then.

Its really screw up when a developer can't even get the FOV right for widescreen resolutions
 
I thought most games defined FOV as vertical field of view? It doesn't matter if you can only define VFOV or HFOV as with the right parameter for one you will get the one you want for the other. They have a relationship in other words, so all of you talking about NEEDING a HFOV setting aren't really clued up on how cameras work in 3D engines.


perspective.jpg


I found the original game quite boring, the setting was very dull. I'm sick of mostly interior shooters. I'm also sick of on rails FPS games with little freedom to achieve missions except GET KEY A, MOVE TO WAYPOINT B, USE KEY.
 
Yeah, you can define it either way. You could define diagonally if you wanted to, really. Most games still define it horizontally.

The game is supposedly supposed to key off the vertical FOV, but doesn't. If it did, the game would be hor+, assuming the FOV doesn't change when the aspect ratio widens. The FOV setting is for the horizontal and it sticks to it regardless of the aspect ratio (which is why landscape Eyefinity is so unbelievably fucked up).
 
phide said:
Yeah, you can define it either way. You could define diagonally if you wanted to, really. Most games still define it horizontally.
Click to expand...

From code I've read the "Normal" seems to be vertical FOV, either way it's pointless, the camera beams out from the viewer at the FOV, it's just how the game calculates the other. ie if you define FOV as vertical with 90 it means from top of screen to bottom you can always see 90 degrees. Depending upon your RESOLUTION/ASPECT RATIO your horizontal fov will differ.

Alternatively if what you define as FOV is horizontally based you have the opposite issue. Either way there is only one FOV angle, games simply have to define whether they are doing HFOV or VFOV internally so they can work out the correct projection matrix.

Basically the FOV needs to be adjustable to suit users, the problem with bioshock is it seems you can't do it easily and it changes back all the time like Borderlands. This is because they adjust FOV for various visual effects. It's about a 5 minute job to support user defined FOVs so if they can't get it out quick they are morons.

phide said:
The game is supposedly supposed to key off the vertical FOV, but doesn't. If it did, the game would be hor+, assuming the FOV doesn't change when the aspect ratio widens. The FOV setting is for the horizontal and it sticks to it regardless of the aspect ratio (which is why landscape Eyefinity is so unbelievably fucked up).
Click to expand...

Hard to know but that sounds like what might be happening. Either way it's pointless whether HFOV or VFOV is how they define the "FOV" , just let users tweak it till they find what they want and give PC users a better default.
 
"If there are any balls over at 2K Games, I hope somebody kicks them square in those jewels over screwing the POV pooch for widescreen users and raping the high end Eyefinity guys and stealing their hard earned money"

"Oh, and you know what else, the textures suck at 3600x1920 too; must have used the "high resolution" screen on the iPad to create some of those... I want my money back. I really do."

Honestly, eyefinity is MAYBE 0.2% of their userbase. The [H] is seriously misrepresenting this game, all the "problems" listed at the top of this thread are common issues for MANY games. They're singling out this game like it's the only one... I don't own it and I haven't played it, but the H's post on the main page made me say gee maybe I shouldn't buy this but after thinking about it objectively, those aren't problems that only this game has...

P.S. I have two 30" monitors - I realize not every game is going to run flawless out of the box for such extreme resolutions...Ideally it would, but this is business, they have target markets they focus on, not fringe/niche markets...

I hope this post doesn't come across as hostile, just seems a bit unfair and inflammatory on behalf of hardocp if u ask me.
 
RyanLucier said:
"If there are any balls over at 2K Games, I hope somebody kicks them square in those jewels over screwing the POV pooch for widescreen users and raping the high end Eyefinity guys and stealing their hard earned money"

"Oh, and you know what else, the textures suck at 3600x1920 too; must have used the "high resolution" screen on the iPad to create some of those... I want my money back. I really do."

Honestly, eyefinity is MAYBE 0.2% of their userbase. The [H] is seriously misrepresenting this game, all the "problems" listed at the top of this thread are common issues for MANY games. They're singling out this game like it's the only one... I don't own it and I haven't played it, but the H's post on the main page made me say gee maybe I shouldn't buy this but after thinking about it objectively, those aren't problems that only this game has...

P.S. I have two 30" monitors - I realize not every game is going to run flawless out of the box for such extreme resolutions...Ideally it would, but this is business, they have target markets they focus on, not fringe/niche markets...

I hope this post doesn't come across as hostile, just seems a bit unfair and inflammatory on behalf of hardocp if u ask me.
Click to expand...
Well it is [H]. If Gamespot reviewed Bioshock 2 as a terrible game because their eyefinity setup didn't work with it, then yea that's a little biased.
 
RyanLucier said:
"If there are any balls over at 2K Games, I hope somebody kicks them square in those jewels over screwing the POV pooch for widescreen users and raping the high end Eyefinity guys and stealing their hard earned money"

"Oh, and you know what else, the textures suck at 3600x1920 too; must have used the "high resolution" screen on the iPad to create some of those... I want my money back. I really do."

Honestly, eyefinity is MAYBE 0.2% of their userbase. The [H] is seriously misrepresenting this game, all the "problems" listed at the top of this thread are common issues for MANY games. They're singling out this game like it's the only one... I don't own it and I haven't played it, but the H's post on the main page made me say gee maybe I shouldn't buy this but after thinking about it objectively, those aren't problems that only this game has...

P.S. I have two 30" monitors - I realize not every game is going to run flawless out of the box for such extreme resolutions...Ideally it would, but this is business, they have target markets they focus on, not fringe/niche markets...

I hope this post doesn't come across as hostile, just seems a bit unfair and inflammatory on behalf of hardocp if u ask me.
Click to expand...

Learn to pay attention. Its not an issue only effecting Eyefinity users. It effects EVERYONE with a widescreen monitor. Widescreens make up a fairly large portion of the PC gaming market. Eyefinity resolutions just make the problem worse.
 
Nearly every dev these days create games for consoles.

All FOV's have changed, and even the engine makers (nearly every FPS on the console uses UE3 - which is perfect for consoles). Low resolution textures, shit FOV, etc.

No dedicated servers, no support, messed up controls.

There's so many articles on how Intel/Google/Microsoft want to own the PC market. The PC market is in shambles right now. Name the last game that came out apart from Crysis that was built from the ground up for PC and really pushed boundaries for graphics and required hardware?

I remember the days of Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Unreal, countless dedicated PC FPS games where every time you upgraded, you could just get to that new detail level or FPS limit.

How much new technology have Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, ATI, Microsoft, etc bought to the table? We have so much tech built into our GPU's, dedicated PhysX, advanced ways of dealing with textures, super amounts of bandwidth, memory, speed, dual GPU, multiple monitor support, 120hz support, DX10, DX11... I could go on and on.

Look at the hardware on any computer store shelf or online store. How much fucking bandwidth and power does the tech of today have. Yet, our games run the same as a console AS WELL as being gimped.

My system is close to 4 times faster on a much more updated platform (full Windows operating system). I get constant driver updates for my hardware, slowly finding tweaks in their drives, giving me more options, faster performance.

Yet, because the games are created on console first with set limitations, I am then passed on those limitations on a machine that cost me 5, or 10 times as much money.

We spend countless thousands of dollars buying this hardware for developers to blatantly not give a shit about PC gamers.

We started the high-def, high-resolution, high-end gaming companies. Without PC games, engines and dev's, there would be no Billion $ revenue for MW2 or GTA4.

Years ago you had smart dev's dedicated to PC gaming.
Years ago you had smart dev's dedicated to console gaming.

Now that tech has improved and people spend more on their home theatre and gaming is now "cool" on our culture... games are a BIG thing. Because of that, and low-entry $$ for consoles, dev's can make much more money and spread out releases with ease.

There are 2 dev's I can think of that are truly dedicated to PC gamers. Blizzard and Valve. Valve release games on consoles, but they don't create the game for the consoles first, THEN PC..........

Personally, I think PC hardware is the fore front of technology for the consumer. Games should be created FIRST on PC as that's like a target render for special FX in a movie. Hit a target render and then get as close as you can to that.

Why make a game on the common denominator when you can't work UP? PC games will never look better than console games apart from higher resolutions, AA, AF control (which we're slowly losing.......) and higher frame rates yet engine caps are now hitting at 85 - 100fps (another thing we're losing........).

Devs : make the games on PC, get them looking great. Scale the engine, scale the graphics. A few people working on controls for PC and seperately for consoles. FOV fixes for both. Testing.

It can't be that fucking hard. It was done perfectly before the 360/ps3 came along.

Until next generation consoles, we will not see an improvement in graphics. Until consoles get a mouse/keyboard we won't see an improvement on PC controls. Until TV's hit 120hz and the console can hit that on every game, we won't see a smooth solution on the PC.

120hz is amazing. On PC, Team Fortress 2 almost feels surreal. Yet, in another game that was ported from a console (MW2 for example), it doesn't feel anywhere near as smooth.
 
Hey guys, anyone know how to restore my saved games, i formatted and saved my saved games folder, and the folder inside of appdata, i transfered it back but it wont see my saved games, id hate to start over.
 
Yeesh, just got a look at it. I'm going to have to wait on a patch. The way the viewport is stretched and how "zoomed in" it looks is a complete turn off. Lets hope the patch gets here quickly, as I'm pretty miffed.
 
I'm just getting tired at this point with games not being up to par upon release, and not in a figurative sense. I'm actually mentally tired from having to try to figure out how to fix issues to get games to play how they are supposed to in Eyefinity.

Devs are really killing the goodwill ATI brought back to gaming for me... Sure, Eyefinity makes up less than 2% of the user base, but I remember when game developers would move mountains (not that this is the case here) to cater to the high-end since they knew that's where things were headed.

In summation, I'm not buying this game until it's fixed.
 
MarshMellow said:
From code I've read the "Normal" seems to be vertical FOV, either way it's pointless, the camera beams out from the viewer at the FOV, it's just how the game calculates the other. ie if you define FOV as vertical with 90 it means from top of screen to bottom you can always see 90 degrees. Depending upon your RESOLUTION/ASPECT RATIO your horizontal fov will differ.
Click to expand...
It's just easier when the FOV is defined vertically and tied to a console variable so widescreen users don't have to adjust the FOV for proper hor+ rendering. When the cvar is the HFOV, some trigonometric calculation is required to figure out the 'correct' FOV adjustments based on the HFOV. Makes the implementation of widescreen support a no-brainer on the development side as well.
 
" This pretty much impacts anyone on a 16:9 or 16:10 display."

Um, so are you saying the PS3 and 360 versions - which I've heard have the same 16:9 FOV as the PC, are also incorrect?

How do you know 16:9 as it is, isn't exactly as intended?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top