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STAR WARS™: Episode I RacerIs the game gonna be patched soon? Because selling a game in this state is the reason people are pissed at the game industry.(23 posts)(23 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 13, 2018
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Llyr86: So if you order something at a restaurant, and you get the ingredients and a piece of paper telling you how to make it. That would satisfy you would it? Or electrician? Plumber? You wouldn't make that excuse for anything other than PC gaming, I think personally.
And AAA is complete bullshit these days. Bug and microtransaction riddled messes that are shat out to make Q1 look better with the "Fuckit. we'll fix it in post" mentality.
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Korell: Restaurant - everyone eats, but not everyone eats the same food or likes the same food. You can place an order and ask them to leave out something you don't like, such as mustard or mayo or whatever. How many different human digestion systems are there?

Electrician and plumber - they come to your property and see what needs to be done, so the work they do is specific to your situation.

PC Gaming - GOG do not come to you to see your computer. GOG don't even get to know what your computer setup is before the game is sold to you. So it is a very different situation to all the examples you just gave. If you need support they will ask you for a DXDiag that gives them a lot more information about your specific setup. And if they cannot get it working for you then you get refunded.

So, how about you answer the question I initially asked you?
"And how do you propose GOG should test that the game runs on every single possible combination of PC hardware and software?"
I'll just answer your question with the same thing I do when I know I got a big group of people comming for lunch with a biblical list of allergies and dietary sensetivities.
Just because it's hard doesn't mean I won't do it.
And if you think everyones digestive system is the same. Then you are terribly misinformed. Yes it looks the same but christ knows that how people handle food they eat is terribly different.

And as to electricans and plumbers. If you hire them to fix something and install something at your place, and you wake up the following morning to a) a cellar or kitchen full of water.
or
b) a house on fire
You WOULD complain because the job/product was improparly done/poor condition.

I know everyone thinks their job is the hardest one and it's clear that you have some experience within this field, but don't claim it's hard thus impossible. If that where the case then PC gaming wouldn't be such a massive buisness.
Posted May 13, 2018
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Llyr86: So if you order something at a restaurant, and you get the ingredients and a piece of paper telling you how to make it. That would satisfy you would it? Or electrician? Plumber? You wouldn't make that excuse for anything other than PC gaming, I think personally.
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JayFoxRox: Except this is not how it works.

If you want to stick with that analogy: They also prepare your food and serve it to you. However, they did not slaughter the meat themselves and they did not farm their own potatoes. They just bought those parts and prepared the meal for you.
But cooking is hard, especially if you don't have all ingredients for grandmas old recipe.
So suddenly, you as a cook, have to come up with substitutes: some will like the taste, others won't.

---

I feel like you are criticizing the wrong portion of GOG.com in general.

Personally, in the past weeks I've also noticed some shortcomings in their model:

- Lack of support (aside from the money back policy): The SWE1R support article has almost no information. Stuff like changed game behaviour and glitches on certain framerates, the Ando Prime sky bug etc. are not even acknowledged.
- Lack of oversight on the forums, with moderation or support (almost?) never stepping in, even when illegal material is being shared; even after reporting the post in question.
- Long delay for patches without communication (see 2 previous points). This bothers me personally, because I also do similar work for fun in my freetime. I could have addressed a handful of reported issues (in a couple of hours), or at least informed users why they run into issues and wether it will be fixed soon. So I'm surprised that a paid team of engineers seems to be unable to do so in almost 2 weeks.
- At least one botched release in the past. I don't have the specifics, but the Re-Volt fiasco looks really bad to me; selling the involved persons software is an extremly poor and dangerous decision (aside from other legal matters with Re-Volt). This was a couple of years ago though, so maybe it's better now.

Luckily, all of these are addressable issues.

I feel this current lack of communication and integrity, is much worse than what you imply (selling "broken" software to make money short-term, with no intention of fixes).
That said, lack of communication can be perceived as what you described here.

And even then, all of that doesn't bother me as badly as your impoliteness and disrespect (which seems unfounded or poorly explained).
Paying money for a product doesn't entitle you to being a prick - especially if you can simply get your money back.

Simply contact the support directly if there's an issue.
So far I've not called anyone anything. Not called anyone a crook or a swinder, just explained a trend that is infurating to me and my friends, but I'll agree with you that calling GoG, activision or ea is hyperbolic and they are not even close to that level of shady.

So considering that roughly 80% of information in a conversation is given through body language, assume I'm writing this in a pleasant, conversational tone with a neutral, bordering on engaged facial expression, and not one laden with irony, sarcasm and defensive body language, like crossed arms.

1. I like and greatly respect CPR because their buisness sense is one of "Respect the gamer"

2. As previously explained, I could have downloaded a cracked version and played that, but because they where selling it and I felt they deserved my buisness, I bought it from them in good faith that they had given it the proper checkup.

3. Upon realizing that they hadn't, my issue was quite normal and there was no straight forward way of fixing it (At least initially untill I did some digging and fixed it quite easily by downloading dgvoodoo, at the suggestion of someone.) I decided to voice my complaint because if a problem is so common yet unadressed (As I saw it), voices joined together are stronger.

4. And I'll try to work with your interpretation of my analogy even though I struggle to see how it pertains to the issue.
It would be greatly inefficient to construct a farm just to grow food for a restaurant. Mind you there are these kinds of places and the food in general is great, but their capacity is very low and they tend to have a short season so their business isn't surviving off the restaurant alone.
And by grandmas food I'll assume you mean comfort foods, foods that brings that touch of nostalgia, good things you had as a kid, like maybe meatballs or cookies only dad or mom knew how to make.
No one will ever make something as good as your comfort foods, I know this from considerable testing and attempted reconstruction.
But yes if you lack ingredients then you have to improvise and in general, if the customer knows what he is getting and knows what it'll taste like, it's hard to substitute that missing ingredient.
So I'd take it off the menu and offer a free dessert rather than try and cheat him and face the rage and anger when he realizes someone tried to swindle him with a subpar product.
Posted May 13, 2018
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Llyr86: I'll just answer your question with the same thing I do when I know I got a big group of people comming for lunch with a biblical list of allergies and dietary sensetivities.
Just because it's hard doesn't mean I won't do it.
So a big group of people is what, 100? Do you know how many different combinations of PC hardware and software there are? It's thousands and thousands and it's changing all the time. It isn't just hard, it's impossible for GOG to test it on every combination. So you haven't answered how GOG can do it as you've given another example that is not in the same situation. It just cannot be done.

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Llyr86: And if you think everyones digestive system is the same. Then you are terribly misinformed. Yes it looks the same but christ knows that how people handle food they eat is terribly different.
I never said that everyone's digestive system is the same, I said "How many different human digestion systems are there?" cause it certainly isn't the uncountable thousands of PC hardware and software combinations.

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Llyr86: And as to electricans and plumbers. If you hire them to fix something and install something at your place, and you wake up the following morning to a) a cellar or kitchen full of water.
or
b) a house on fire
You WOULD complain because the job/product was improparly done/poor condition.
As I said before, electricians and plumbers assess the work needed at your property. GOG do not assess the work that is needed to get a game running on your specific computer at the point of sale. They have a series of test rigs that they have to get it running on before they make it available for sale, and then if it doesn't work on your computer you can get support from them, and if that fails you get your money back. It's a completely different model.

EDIT: Also, glad you fixed it quite easily using dgVoodoo2, but this isn't a solution that GOG can use as dgVoodoo requires a DX11 graphics card that not everyone has, so they've had to use a different DirectX wrapper. GOG support have advised the use of the dgVoodoo2 wrapper, though, for those having issues, if they have a compatible graphics card.
Post edited May 13, 2018 by Korell
Posted May 17, 2018
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Llyr86: I'll just answer your question with the same thing I do when I know I got a big group of people comming for lunch with a biblical list of allergies and dietary sensetivities.
Just because it's hard doesn't mean I won't do it.
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Korell: So a big group of people is what, 100? Do you know how many different combinations of PC hardware and software there are? It's thousands and thousands and it's changing all the time. It isn't just hard, it's impossible for GOG to test it on every combination. So you haven't answered how GOG can do it as you've given another example that is not in the same situation. It just cannot be done.

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Llyr86: And if you think everyones digestive system is the same. Then you are terribly misinformed. Yes it looks the same but christ knows that how people handle food they eat is terribly different.
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Korell: I never said that everyone's digestive system is the same, I said "How many different human digestion systems are there?" cause it certainly isn't the uncountable thousands of PC hardware and software combinations.

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Llyr86: And as to electricans and plumbers. If you hire them to fix something and install something at your place, and you wake up the following morning to a) a cellar or kitchen full of water.
or
b) a house on fire
You WOULD complain because the job/product was improparly done/poor condition.
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Korell: As I said before, electricians and plumbers assess the work needed at your property. GOG do not assess the work that is needed to get a game running on your specific computer at the point of sale. They have a series of test rigs that they have to get it running on before they make it available for sale, and then if it doesn't work on your computer you can get support from them, and if that fails you get your money back. It's a completely different model.

EDIT: Also, glad you fixed it quite easily using dgVoodoo2, but this isn't a solution that GOG can use as dgVoodoo requires a DX11 graphics card that not everyone has, so they've had to use a different DirectX wrapper. GOG support have advised the use of the dgVoodoo2 wrapper, though, for those having issues, if they have a compatible graphics card.
A big group depends on what kinda place you run. If it's an alacarte restaurant with two chefs on the line and 100 seats, 12 people can feel like a lot since you probably already have a full tag of orders and that means another 12 (At the very least) orders that have to be completed at the same time and you got maybe 20 mins on it. So you have to start divvying up who does what, the cooking time of all individual items and if there are alergies involved, boy those 12 can feel like a mountain, even more so when those 12 ordered 16 different things with extra mayo but they expect the mayo to be complimentary. If you run a catering service then a 100 people is nothing since you got like 3 days to make the food and the only thing that can really screw you over is not geting your groceries or sudden cancelation and you're almost done with everything and don't really have a way to sell it off.

And since I mentioned alergies up there it's a nice segway to digestion systems. Because in the end it's all on how we process the food, no? Imagine those 12 people with their 16 orders and everyone has sensetivities, so if one dude has gluten intollerance, or celiacs, and he is on the exstreeme spectrum, his food can't even be remotely close to an errant breadcrumb. And you've a timer on you remember.
But you can also generalize, which is something that is possible to do, people using GoG are most likely honest folk who are willing to pay for a GoldenOldie, rather than downloading a cracked version, make it run on the most basic windows and as in my case, have a link to the background software if it truly is that hard. Because when all I had to do was get that juju it was rather annoying how reading on the forum on how to fix it made it seem like this Herculean task when it was piddlingly easy.

ReEDIT: I dunno what any of those words means. I but from the discussion I'm assuming it has something to do with graphics and fooling the game to think it's running on compatible soft/hardware?
Posted May 17, 2018
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Llyr86: A big group depends on what kinda place you run.
Yes, scale is relative. And for GOG you have their staff vs millions of computers. We don't have details such as the number of GOG users and how many machines they have, nor details on how many people have purchased Episode 1 Racer, so we cannot measure that scale in this instance (though I'd imagine GOG staff can see how many copies of the game they've sold, especially as they track popular sales on the front page) but it is easy to see how this is going to be a very big group.

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Llyr86: EDIT: I dunno what any of those words means. I but from the discussion I'm assuming it has something to do with graphics and fooling the game to think it's running on compatible soft/hardware?
If you mean the use of dgVoodoo, then this is a wrapper for the DirectX graphics APIs (the APIs being interfaces between the game software, the operating system software and the computer hardware). Episode 1 Racer is a DirectX 6.1 game as it is that old. This won't run on modern Windows for various incompatibility reasons. What GOG provide is a wrapper for the ddraw.dll that captures those DirectX 6.1 calls and translates them to DirectX 9 calls which modern Windows can handle. I don't know the specifics of the wrapper that GOG are using, though (as there are a few out there).

dgVoodoo, however, takes those DirectX 6.1 calls and translates them to DirectX 11 calls, which should be more compatible with Windows 8/8.1/10, but it relies on the graphics card being capable of handling DirectX 11 features and having a DirectX 11 capable system (which is Windows Vista SP2 and above, so Windows XP is no good here and probably the main reason why GOG don't provide dgVoodoo with the installation).

So in a way you can think of it as fooling the game, but I feel that it is more accurate to say that it is telling a modern Windows OS how to handle the game by translating all of the old API calls to newer ones.
Posted May 18, 2018
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Llyr86: A big group depends on what kinda place you run.
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Korell: Yes, scale is relative. And for GOG you have their staff vs millions of computers. We don't have details such as the number of GOG users and how many machines they have, nor details on how many people have purchased Episode 1 Racer, so we cannot measure that scale in this instance (though I'd imagine GOG staff can see how many copies of the game they've sold, especially as they track popular sales on the front page) but it is easy to see how this is going to be a very big group.

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Llyr86: EDIT: I dunno what any of those words means. I but from the discussion I'm assuming it has something to do with graphics and fooling the game to think it's running on compatible soft/hardware?
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Korell: If you mean the use of dgVoodoo, then this is a wrapper for the DirectX graphics APIs (the APIs being interfaces between the game software, the operating system software and the computer hardware). Episode 1 Racer is a DirectX 6.1 game as it is that old. This won't run on modern Windows for various incompatibility reasons. What GOG provide is a wrapper for the ddraw.dll that captures those DirectX 6.1 calls and translates them to DirectX 9 calls which modern Windows can handle. I don't know the specifics of the wrapper that GOG are using, though (as there are a few out there).

dgVoodoo, however, takes those DirectX 6.1 calls and translates them to DirectX 11 calls, which should be more compatible with Windows 8/8.1/10, but it relies on the graphics card being capable of handling DirectX 11 features and having a DirectX 11 capable system (which is Windows Vista SP2 and above, so Windows XP is no good here and probably the main reason why GOG don't provide dgVoodoo with the installation).

So in a way you can think of it as fooling the game, but I feel that it is more accurate to say that it is telling a modern Windows OS how to handle the game by translating all of the old API calls to newer ones.
Why do they render the old code obsolete then? Does it take up that much space or can't you build upwards from it so that the old code still remains viable?
Or would running direcX11 with the directX6.1 sourcecode still viable, be like building a Tesla car with a cassete player? A complete waste of space?

And as for them not having enough people, you still can run some predictive diagnostics and the like on what kind of players will buy this. No one under 20 is gonna buy it for one as they where not even a glint in their parents drunk eye when this game was made. Nostalgia rather than objective quality is going to determine the sales. And I cna easily figgure out some more factors that makes me think they where lucky if they sold over 5k copies of this game on GoG.

GoG doesn't have that big of a markedshare, so to turn to a restaurant annalogy again, a small niche restaurant makes DAMNED sure they are the best in their niche and thus delivers a stunning product to their customers.
Posted May 18, 2018
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Llyr86: Why do they render the old code obsolete then? Does it take up that much space or can't you build upwards from it so that the old code still remains viable?
Or would running direcX11 with the directX6.1 sourcecode still viable, be like building a Tesla car with a cassete player? A complete waste of space?
This isn't something I know all that much about in detail. From what I remember, DirectX 6 had an update to make it DirectX 7, then another one to make it DirectX 8 and then another to make it DirectX 9 (but some features still dropped out, which is why games like Blood 2 have so many issues). So up to this point it was just one DirectX installation. After this point it became separated, so instead of one DirectX installation you end up with multiple DirectX installations.

On Vista, then, you had DirectX 9.0L (which was a stripped down DirectX 9.0c for compatibility reasons, and it was always recommended to update it with a full DirectX 9.0c anyway) along with DirectX 10. Then DirectX 11 was separate, so you could then have DirectX 9.0c, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11. I think (but I'm not 100%) that DirectX 12 is the same with yet another separate set of libraries. I know my current machine has compaibility for DirectX 9c, 10, 11 and 12.

I think what makes the code obsolete is down to hardware changes and new technologies in both hardware and software. New features present that may replace old ones as they work more efficiently, or look better. That kind of thing. At one point I had a GTX 260 which was DirectX 10 compatible, but not DirectX 10.1 so it would run DirectX10 games but miss some very minor features. I wouldn't be able to use this card with dgVoodoo2 (but it is an ancient card now anyway, and it died a few years back).

But yes, very old elements do become deprecated and unsupported and then removed. Like a 32-bit Windows OS has compatibility for 16-bit software, but a 64-bit Windows OS only has a compatibility mode for 32-bit, it cannot run 16-bit software. If you need to then you can set up a virtual machine running a 32-bit Windows OS or a very old 16-bit OS. Things like this contribute to why older software can become much harder to get running on modern machines and OSes, and typically the more compatibility layers you have to go through (virtual machines, emulation, etc.) the worse the performance becomes as you are having to run a whole lot more.

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Llyr86: And as for them not having enough people, you still can run some predictive diagnostics and the like on what kind of players will buy this. No one under 20 is gonna buy it for one as they where not even a glint in their parents drunk eye when this game was made. Nostalgia rather than objective quality is going to determine the sales. And I cna easily figgure out some more factors that makes me think they where lucky if they sold over 5k copies of this game on GoG.
I feel that this is an over-generalisation. The younger generation of Star Wars fans may very much want to play some of the older games, even if just for the experience of it. A friend of mine from work has a young daughter who wants to get some of the legacy Mario games to play on her Nintendo Switch (I gather from their virtual arcade store?). So saying anyone under 20 won't play a game because they weren't born at the time isn't an absolute.
Posted May 29, 2018
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Korell: I feel that this is an over-generalisation. The younger generation of Star Wars fans may very much want to play some of the older games, even if just for the experience of it. A friend of mine from work has a young daughter who wants to get some of the legacy Mario games to play on her Nintendo Switch (I gather from their virtual arcade store?). So saying anyone under 20 won't play a game because they weren't born at the time isn't an absolute.
Considering how much younger Star Wars fans love the prequels, and Episode 1 Racer was one of the only good games from that era (I'm not counting cross-era games), I absolutely can see younger Star Wars fans wanting to play this game.
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STAR WARS™: Episode I RacerIs the game gonna be patched soon? Because selling a game in this state is the reason people are pissed at the game industry.(23 posts)(23 posts)
(23 posts)