If it’s the Microsoft Store version, filesystem permissions will prevent SK’s CEGUI OSD from working unless injection is done as admin.
Surprised to see a Microsoft game using Flip Sequential :-\ SK can definitely improve things here.
And Fullscreen mode is a lie, it is borderless. You MUST use Special K to get fullscreen g-sync to work.
Moreover, the game uses multiple swapchains. Framerate counters are all wrong, I need to re-design a few things to handle this correctly.
At least the game doesn’t crash anymore 
I’m in between GPU’s right now, I sold my 2080 Ti and using 980 Ti, which doesn’t support my Freesync 2 monitor. What are the best settings I can use with a limit of 30 fps while the monitor is set to 120hz, and no g-sync support.
Going to take some time for Kal to work out the best settings 
I have no space to download the game, and i’m too lazy to delete games i might open again for a few seconds. It sure seems like a nice game to play (simulate?).
how do you add it? I cant access the exe directory
A post was split to a new topic: Microsoft Flight Simulator
I need to add HDR screenshot support for non-Steam games Use the gamebar for now if you’re playing Flight Simulator in HDR.
Anywho… the settings posted prior make a HUGE difference. Biggest improvement to framepacing I think I have ever pulled out of my toolbelt. I’ll start a thread for Flight Simulator.
That was way too fast. Wtf 
I get lots of practice tuning stuttery games
I agree and I think its because these types of third person cinematic games are always being extremely hyped up and winning numerous gotys. I feel though that Xbox as of right now is closer to Nintendo than Sony at least with games like Grounded, Wasteland, and Avowed.
They left a lot of debug text output in the shipping version of Flight Sim I guess they didn’t expect people to easily debug a UWP game.
08/26/2020 02:21:36.217: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.7.12.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\FlightSimulator.exe: [4948][I][19:00:57.526][HTTPCLIENT] HCHttpCallPerformExecute [ID 1] Iteration 1
08/26/2020 02:21:36.218: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.7.12.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\FlightSimulator.exe: [5C88][I][19:00:57.526][HTTPCLIENT] HCHttpCallRequestSetTimeout [ID 2]: timeoutInSeconds=20
08/26/2020 02:21:36.218: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.7.12.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\FlightSimulator.exe: [5C88][I][19:00:57.526][HTTPCLIENT] HCHttpCallPerform [ID 2] uri: https://achievements.xboxlive.com/users/xuid(2546678360720207)/achievements?titleId=1777860928
https://achievements.xboxlive.com/users/xuid(2546678360720207)/achievements?titleId=1777860928
I suppose I could reverse engineer the Xbox Live API and build Steam-like features for Xbox Game Pass games
… I have a ban hammer, and I’m not afraid to use it… 
That is a bit weird to hear seeing how “the first few hours” doesn’t really hit any of the larger story notes at all. The story (or, more like backstory, I guess) of that game really starts to come into itself when it starts exploring whom Elisabet Sobeck was, and what Project Zero Dawn was about, and depending on your playstyle that happens more like 15-25 hours into the game.
The writing is fine. It’s not a streamlined “cinematic” game with the kind of heavy story you might’ve come to expect, but for an open world game it’s good enough.
The meat of the “story” comes from the backstory and revelations you get in regards to what events transpired to turn the game world into what it is at the time you play through it. The “current” story of the game itself, as in “the now”, is technically of less importance and just serves to give the player enough of a reason to go to and discover the next major revelation about the past.
This is probably what doesn’t carry over well in discussions between players whom have finished the game and those whom have just started out. For the players whom have finished the game, when they refer to the “story” of the game being good they often mean the “backstory” and revelations about the past, and how it ties into the “now”. But for new players or those whom haven’t played much of the game yet, they mostly focus on the “now” story, I guess, which isn’t where the meat is at.
The game can be summarized as a Tomb Raider-esque open world game with a passable “now” story and a ton of side quests that fleshes out the world, with some really good and well handled backstory and lore throughout the main quest.
2 Likes
I got SpecialK to work on Euro Truck Sim 2 using the DX11 config posted on Steam here. In the ETS2 menu, when I press CTRL+SHIFT+BACKSPACE to bring up the SpecialK menu, it appears but the mouse cursor is frozen and I can’t move around the SpecialK menu to do anything. Have you seen this before and is there something I can do to be able to use the SpecialK menu?
You can try my config.
SpecialK.ini (5.0 КБ)
UPD. Damn, same thing -_-.
Well, if you have a controller, you can open SK control panel with Back+Start and use it to navigate. If Back+Start do nothing, you need to set steam input to force off in game properties on steam.
1 Like
How do I spoiler mark lol, I want to go over what annoyed me if that’s okay. Like I said, it probably is a good game overall, though I doubt the writing quality just increases over time. I don’t know when that’s ever happened in any form of media. But yeah, I can only truly construct an opinion if/when I finish the game. I have been willing to give it another chance anyway, this time trying to ignore story, but if you saw the reactions and praise I saw, you’d understand where I’m coming from.
And as I said in another comment, I can be highly critical when it comes to writing. I’m a movie guy first and foremost, always watching well written movies because they’re so good. Even reading movie scripts. Heck, I’ve seen hundreds of black n white and foreign films just in search of the good stuff all the time.
RE: Spoiler Tagging
I have no idea, but frankly I think there’s a more elegant way provided through the
[details=XYZ]markup.
I am a Spoiler (with added context)
If you expanded this, it was voluntary. Not because your mouse happened to move over some black text.
Just wrap spoiling text in a [details] [/details] block
One of the reason I really like the older movies they’re more experimental in a way and many of them are also really good.
Course there’s probably a mountain of more forgotten literature, books, comics, songs and movies that are from periods like these that are not ha ha.
I’m less critical to video game writing but then I’ve seen it kinda decline a bit over the years too and I don’t have too high expectations most of the time. Some of it can be surprisingly good but a lot of it is very rough or you get the feeling it’s overdone or the obvious reveal or twist should be some big moment and players get it sometimes even before the game is launched.
(Trailers of ultimate spoiling doesn’t help either nor does these pre-release review and impression things leading to a lot of early spoilers too.)
Executive meddling and mass appeal also messes it up but even so sometimes it gets really good although sometimes a decent or above average at least story is also hindered by incredibly poor gameplay or other issues.
EDIT: I suppose if we also had less copying of these older really good works that might also help a bit but that’s happened since forever. (Studying some of these works doesn’t hurt though.)
Plus clones of popular games and all that also since way back such as with Tetris and Pacman and these probably have a lot of takes on the same type of game from other development studios or the publisher making more and more sequels or lightly reskinning the same game which also happened.
Older movies are great if you just want a focus on stories. Since then, we’ve grown in the acting department, camera work, visual storytelling, everything else really that elevates the storytelling for some. I highly suggest Akira Kurosawa btw, if you’re not familiar with his work. Americans have copied his work quite a lot and seized the credit. The only issue i have with him, he thinks ugly equates to bad, which is kind of discriminating and is similar to what Disney always did with women in their older cartoons.
One of the things that annoys me about video-game writing, is when people really praise a story constantly, and then i finally try it out of curiosity or even hype, play through it and think meh this is mediocre compared to what i’ve seen. I’ve said here a few days ago, most of the best writers don’t want to work in the gaming department. I don’t blame them, imagine having to cover side missions and all the filler dialogue etc during a mission and depending on a player’s action. Of course, they could hire others to cover that stuff, but then you’ll get varying writing quality.
I feel like Nintendo have the best approach to exclusives, partially because they know not to get knee deep into the writing department, and so it’s easy to ignore. I am hoping the BOTW sequel actually has more of a story, but it won’t hurt the game for me if it doesn’t. With Sony, story is always central in their many cinematic games, so it’s hard to ignore.
I should clarify, i can enjoy “good” stories too, hope i don’t sound like an elitist who always needs the best of the best. Sometimes, just having enough heart and care will do the job, as long as the writing doesn’t make me cringe. I just love to look for those great artists because i appreciate their work.
Edit: RDR2 is the only time i feel like i’ve experienced high standard writing in video-games. Haven’t played the first game. There’s some pacing issues, sure. Even some perhaps unnecessary parts of the story. But point me towards a film or show that actually tells a story of a team of gunslingers in the western genre and this well, you won’t find it. All the recognised western movies are always about solo gunslingers, or solos meeting up (magnificent seven), or a few partners at most. RDR2 managed to tell something new here, and the dialogue and emotional weight hold up.
Edit 2: Although i’m not a fan of the film, the recent The Lighthouse is very eye-opening. It shows how much we’ve grown since those older black and white films.
I’ve seen some of the Kurosawa movies but I do know the camera work was widely praised though there was a lot of complications too I believe but I’ll need to read up on it again.
Didn’t even cover it but yeah some of the older tropes would also have been in full effect and is still around even in modern works.
(Some of it might work some of it is probably pretty dated.)
Can understand the writers finding better work elsewhere some of the programmers and other video game positions could get a lot better work conditions and tolerance and more secure employment while also getting better paid with less stress and mandatory overwork just for a few common issues.
(Some examples from the QA sections are also incredibly weird to hear how they get treated as a worse tier of employees entirely and things like that.)
As for Red Dead Redemption and the future of Rockstar didn’t the Houser brothers split up, maybe that’s a publisher disagreement and little to no further info will ever be available on that (The video game industry is almost as secretive as the higher-up political levels at times or so it feels like.) which I think was the one responsible for so much of the writing in their games.
Don’t know much about Nintendo but that sounds right plus I think some of the former higher ups also set a lot of these directives and some of them would have started as programmers or game directors and move up from there.
Microsoft seem to be doing a variety of third party deals and acquisitions at the moment while pushing Game Pass more and more, Sony not sure but they do have their well established developer studios and a number of projects in the works.
Hmm guessing cinematic is going to be a big terms for the next generation too and the usual deals and exclusivity agreements as well, will be interesting to see how things go.
Although I expect a big part of the new hardware to immediately go for pushing visual fidelity and higher resolution support possibly focus into 60 or even 120 FPS as 120 Hz is supported now for some game types as well.
But over time work on animation and things like voice acting and presentation and other gameplay elements and story designs could also be seeing some use of this but I suppose it also matters whether or not the open world design continues and then also this focus on multi player and a service model ongoing active development.
Plus development costs and time, Rockstar can take a few more years or could at least I think Take2 wanted a faster turnout for their upcoming games too despite the success with GTA and Red Dead and especially (Maybe as a bit of a reason for this change.) their online modes.
In-game cash for real cash or the Gacha type games and rewards sounds incredibly dumb but it’s also the most profitable businesses at the moment for video games with mobile in particular having some incredibly profit margins and successes for some of the franchises and studios here.
EDIT: Suppose in a way it’s like these “beeping” awful reactive faces in videos like Youtube but it’s what works so everyone does it.
(Have to even, it’s been studied and tested but it’s almost mandatory to have it for getting views.)
There’s these elements and design that just work or get the majority of players invested or hooked and so they are used in a majority of the bigger budget games.
EDIT: How to even explain in a good way it’s tough to set up a lengthy well written story and build up when a large part of the players will possibly drop the game within the first few hours if things feel like they are too slow or nothing big happens immediately or instant reward or power trips and all that stuff.
Focus on these RPG-lite elements I believe are part of that you get a continual reward of getting better colored tier amazing loot and such rewards and things like that.
Not the best at explaining or such but I think there’s a good bit of a well analyzed and deliberate shift for some of these elements and going for what is the most popular and even when it backfires trying to work it out or using it as a testing ground.
(Well that’s probably obvious now that there is positions for filling micro transaction roles for bigger dev studios and such things.)