Interview Dungeon Siege III: More stable than New Vegas

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Dungeon Siege III; Obsidian Entertainment

<p>... which is good news I presume. <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-07-dungeon-siege-iii-more-stable-than-new-vegas-interview" target="_blank">Eurogamer chatted up with Obsidian's Rich Taylor</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="interviewQuestion"><strong><span class="whoistalking">Eurogamer</span>: Did the decision have anything to do with the experience Obsidian had creating Fallout: New Vegas, which had well-documented technical problems?</strong></p>
<p class="interviewQuestion"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p class="interviewAnswer"><strong><span class="whoistalking">Rich Taylor</span>:</strong> Stability and being bug free are extremely high priorities on this project, and we actually talk about it internally constantly. The advantage here we have over, for example Fallout, is when we have a question about how something works, I walk 10 feet outside my office door and go talk to the programmer who wrote it.</p>
<p>That's a lot different than trying to get someone on a mailing list, or get someone on the phone who's in a different time zone or across the country. Those sort of things have made it possible for us to stabilise things and keep things working as well as we like.</p>
<p>It's really made a difference on the development of this project. We've been running on consoles on the 360 and the PlayStation pretty much throughout the length of the project, so we've been staying within memory budgets, mindful of performance issues. So there's no last minute, oh, does this actually run on the PS3? Or, are we stable on the 360?</p>
<p>We actually had one of our internal tools developers spend a lot of time engineering crash reporting into the engine so internally, literally when anyone runs into a crash the game will shut down, it will generate a report, it will provide a stack dump and it will put it into a database, and we can be very diligent about tracking those things and solving them.</p>
<p>So we actually almost never have mystery crashes where we're just stumped. That's a common thing that can plague games in development. It's like, well, we don't know why it crashed. It only happens in QA, or it only happens on non-programmer machines.</p>
<p>Here we have the advantage of, no matter who runs into a crash issue, we're able to get it up on the screen with a stack dump and look at it and peel back the information on it, and identify exactly what happened and get it fixed. That's been a change.</p>
<p>We also just recently finished introducing a memory utility that shows us what's going on in memory at all times on the consoles. We can see where our memory is going. If we're seeing a problem area we can immediately pull up some charts and spreadsheets and it will show us exactly where it is and we can go balance the numbers to fit within the console memory limitations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg1J4LTPjpQ" target="_blank">Here's a new trailer too.</a></p>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-07-dungeon-siege-iii-more-stable-than-new-vegas-interview">Eurogamer</a></p>

 

[Xor]

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[Mangoose]

So it's gonna be crap on the PC then?

 

[Angthoron]

What the hell, a game by Obsidian that isn't having FPS issues in a trailer, has decent visuals and proper textures?

I am somewhat shocked. Hopefully the camera will suck so I won't have to play it.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

So it's gonna be crap on the PC then?

Eurogamer: The game is multiplatform. Is the PC version different in any way?

Rich Taylor: Yeah. There are certain things that are more PC-centric. The input and the controls lean more towards the PC. On the console it controls like a console game. You control your character with the analogue stick and the camera with the other analogue stick, much like most other single-player controlled games are when they come out on the consoles.

On the PC, though, players expect to be able to click and move their character around with the mouse and click on enemies. We'll certainly have it control that way. The interfaces will be mostly the same. The stat comparison available on the console will also be there on the PC. And of course the PC lends itself to higher-resolution textures and visual presentation that we're happy to take advantage of where we can.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Got my fingers crossed.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I must honestly say, when it comes to lootfests, I prefer console controls. Clicking and thus letting the animation and movement perform themselves itself instead of being closer to the action always felt like it's not me who's winning the game and I'm just playing a RTS. Though, go figure, one of my favorite games of all time is Divine Divinity.

I liked controls in the Dark Alliance games.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

I must honestly say, when it comes to lootfests, I prefer console controls. Clicking and thus letting the animation and movement perform themselves itself instead of being closer to the action always felt like it's not me who's winning the game and I'm just playing a RTS. Though, go figure, one of my favorite games of all time is Divine Divinity.

I liked controls in the Dark Alliance games.

For a hack n'slash? Yeah, I'm the same.

PC Version has native gamepad support so it's a non-issue though.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I must honestly say, when it comes to lootfests, I prefer console controls. Clicking and thus letting the animation and movement perform themselves itself instead of being closer to the action always felt like it's not me who's winning the game and I'm just playing a RTS. Though, go figure, one of my favorite games of all time is Divine Divinity.

I liked controls in the Dark Alliance games.

For a hack n'slash? Yeah, I'm the same.

PC Version has native gamepad support so it's a non-issue though.

Is that confirmed? 360 controller support isn't always guaranteed, Biocrap 2 and Mass Faggotry 2 didn't have it.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The interfaces will be mostly the same

Doesn't sound nice.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

Is that confirmed? 360 controller support isn't always guaranteed, Biocrap 2 and Mass Faggotry 2 didn't have it.

It was shown several times on it. The NYCC presentation was played with a pc and two controllers. And there was a picture with previewers playing on pc with controller.

@clockwork

Yeah, we'll see.

 

[Elwro]

I wonder if they'll release another patch for NV.

 

[Jim Cojones]

So it's gonna be crap on the PC then?

Eurogamer: The game is multiplatform. Is the PC version different in any way?

Rich Taylor: Yeah. There are certain things that are more PC-centric. The input and the controls lean more towards the PC. On the console it controls like a console game. You control your character with the analogue stick and the camera with the other analogue stick, much like most other single-player controlled games are when they come out on the consoles.

On the PC, though, players expect to be able to click and move their character around with the mouse and click on enemies. We'll certainly have it control that way. The interfaces will be mostly the same. The stat comparison available on the console will also be there on the PC. And of course the PC lends itself to higher-resolution textures and visual presentation that we're happy to take advantage of where we can.

In other words, on consoles it's an actual action RPG, while on PCs it's a Diablo-like clickfest. Can't see how it's a good decision.

 

[J_C]

So it's gonna be crap on the PC then?

Eurogamer: The game is multiplatform. Is the PC version different in any way?

Rich Taylor: Yeah. There are certain things that are more PC-centric. The input and the controls lean more towards the PC. On the console it controls like a console game. You control your character with the analogue stick and the camera with the other analogue stick, much like most other single-player controlled games are when they come out on the consoles.

On the PC, though, players expect to be able to click and move their character around with the mouse and click on enemies. We'll certainly have it control that way. The interfaces will be mostly the same. The stat comparison available on the console will also be there on the PC. And of course the PC lends itself to higher-resolution textures and visual presentation that we're happy to take advantage of where we can.

In other words, on consoles it's an actual action RPG, while on PCs it's a Diablo-like clickfest. Can't see how it's a good decision.

I don't see the difference between smashing a controller button and smashing the mouse button. This doesn't changes a game.

 

[Volrath]

So it's gonna be crap on the PC then?

Eurogamer: The game is multiplatform. Is the PC version different in any way?

Rich Taylor: Yeah. There are certain things that are more PC-centric. The input and the controls lean more towards the PC. On the console it controls like a console game. You control your character with the analogue stick and the camera with the other analogue stick, much like most other single-player controlled games are when they come out on the consoles.

On the PC, though, players expect to be able to click and move their character around with the mouse and click on enemies. We'll certainly have it control that way. The interfaces will be mostly the same. The stat comparison available on the console will also be there on the PC. And of course the PC lends itself to higher-resolution textures and visual presentation that we're happy to take advantage of where we can.

In other words, on consoles it's an actual action RPG, while on PCs it's a Diablo-like clickfest. Can't see how it's a good decision.

lol wut?

 

[Metro]

The interfaces will be mostly the same

Doesn't sound nice.

How complex do you expect an ARPG interface to be?

 

[Mangoose]

The interfaces will be mostly the same

Doesn't sound nice.

How complex do you expect an ARPG interface to be?

Stat/inventory/quest management may or may not be a headache.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Erm.. it's Dungeon Siege. It's not like this is going to be anything other than a stat-light interactive screen-saver.

 

[Arcanoix]

Told you it looked fine guys. :D I just wish they'd release tools for it. It's probably a lot more flexible than Dragon Turd's set was. That thing was abominable. Still is, with a whopping ONE update to it! UGH! Oh and why the hell is there a Darkspawn Ogre in the trailer? Disappoint.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

Told you it looked fine guys. :D I just wish they'd release tools for it. It's probably a lot more flexible than Dragon Turd's set was. That thing was abominable. Still is, with a whopping ONE update to it! UGH! Oh and why the hell is there a Darkspawn Ogre in the trailer? Disappoint.

What Darkspawn Ogre?

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8974/d ... forest.jpg

Good sir, you are joking.

 

[MicoSelva]

Got my fingers crossed.

This.

 

[hoverdog]

Told you it looked fine guys. :D I just wish they'd release tools for it. It's probably a lot more flexible than Dragon Turd's set was. That thing was abominable. Still is, with a whopping ONE update to it! UGH! Oh and why the hell is there a Darkspawn Ogre in the trailer? Disappoint.

What Darkspawn Ogre?

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8974/d ... forest.jpg

Good sir, you are joking.

DEMON PANDA?!

 

[made]

Glad to hear they're optimizing the game for PS3 and X360. Meanwhile, PC users will have to fiddle with ini tweaks for hours to make it even remotely playable, just like AP.

 

[ortucis]

I can't wait. I have been replaying old RPGs for the last few months and I realised that I always end up enjoying Obsidian's work a lot (right now re-playing KOTOR2 with unofficial patch). Enjoying everything but the fucking performance issues and bugs which their programmers manage to (high on juma juice?) introduce even in kick-ass engines like Unreal 3.

I am hoping that their pet favorite, "the stuttering bug", is not present in DS3. I hate Dungeon Siege series but this one will be awesome IF everything goes right on programming front.


/fanboy

 

[torpid]

I am hoping that their pet favorite, "the stuttering bug", is not present in DS3. I hate Dungeon Siege series but this one will be awesome IF everything goes right on programming front.

Is there any sign in the previews that Obsidian worked its "magic" (for what it's worth) and improved the series? Is a bit of lore sprinkled onto the game going to make you enjoy the essentially unchanged H&S gameplay?