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Apparently, SMT: Nocturne HD is a bit of a technical mess.

RoyalJL

RoyalJL

Member
Oct 28, 2017
55
Tailzo said:
Thank you for the reply.

This makes me a bit sad. Nocturne was such a great game.
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It's one of my favorites games, I have three copies (USA, EUR and JPN) of SMT3, and I have an almost complete SMT collection.

So, yeah, it is sad.

but something more positive, I will recommend this hack+translation:

www.romhacking.net

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

This translates the Chronicles Edition of Shin Megami Tensei III into English. The translation is 10
www.romhacking.net www.romhacking.net

this is the way to get the better "definitive edition" in english.
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,110
Well, got a few months to fix it for the rest of us...

It's Atlus, they won't.
 
Leo

Leo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,558
This is so disappointing, I was really looking forward to the game but now I'm not sure I'm gonna get it. How is Atlus when it comes to patching games to correct problems?
 
matrix-cat

matrix-cat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,284
Well, at least it's reasonably priced. Imagine if they were selling a PS2 remaster for near full price with a shitload of paid DLC on day one AND it was a technical mess.
 
Rocky Road

Rocky Road

Member
Jun 1, 2018
899
RoyalJL said:
Well, I am a veteran game developer with too many years doing low level graphics programming and for some contract work I had to use Unity and also some porting, so maybe I know something about the subject.

It is good for prototyping or if you need easy port for ios/android (its a nightmare to work natively making code that works for both), but for everything else there are better options. Unity have a lot of core problems, and the problems that are mention here are the usual suspect, like the poor memory management, micro-stuttering, etc. Usually people that only had use Unity, is the people who defend it.

And i had this discussion like hundred of times, and it bores me to death. If you do your games with unity or your favorite games are made in unity, is fine, good for you.

Also, if you have the source code in c/c++ is easier to port it "directly", than rework everything in unity/c#. Its like the last official port of the classic doom, it baffles me why they port it to unity.
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I've used more than just Unity myself, and I spent my teen years modding some of my fav games using different frameworks and even churned out some of my own personal dev tools. Additionally my partner and I have been using Unreal Engine for a while now and are debating on restarting development of our current project on it, but overall I don't really think Unity really deserves to be written off as harshly/often as it is. Writing off the engine entirely outside of prototyping and ports when its helped produce some indie gems and has made game development a little more accessible to people seeking to get into it seems a bit much. On the topic of Nocturne, even with Unity I'm sure they could have optimized it some more to make it run better. For a larger studio I agree that Unity definitely isn't the best route to take, It's definitely got a fair share of issues but considering this is a remaster and not a full scale title it's more excusable for them to have used it. A lot of what seems to be wrong with this port seems like it was from carelessness and (seemingly) outsourcing quite a bit of this.
 
wwm0nkey

wwm0nkey

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,576
RoyalJL said:
Well, I am a veteran game developer with too many years doing low level graphics programming and for some contract work I had to use Unity and also some porting, so maybe I know something about the subject.

It is good for prototyping or if you need easy port for ios/android (its a nightmare to work natively making code that works for both), but for everything else there are better options. Unity have a lot of core problems, and the problems that are mention here are the usual suspect, like the poor memory management, micro-stuttering, etc. Usually people that only had use Unity, is the people who defend it.

And i had this discussion like hundred of times, and it bores me to death. If you do your games with unity or your favorite games are made in unity, is fine, good for you.

Also, if you have the source code in c/c++ is easier to port it "directly", than rework everything in unity/c#. Its like the last official port of the classic doom, it baffles me why they port it to unity.
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Not going to get into the engine debate here as I have used Unity for work and am generally positive on it (btw the microstutter issue with their Time.Deltatime system if finally resolved btw)

HOWEVER I do want to agree 100% on the fact that if they have the source code there is no reason to use Unity, it really doesn't make much sense to use Unity as a wrapper here. MCC I get why they used UE4 for a UI layer, but even that was still odd imho.
 
Xenosaga

Xenosaga

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,987
matrix-cat said:
Well, at least it's reasonably priced. Imagine if they were selling a PS2 remaster for near full price with a shitload of paid DLC on day one AND it was a technical mess.
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I don't know how this will be priced in the West, but in JP/Asia it's just a bit lower than full price..
And for Asian regions like Korea here and China, the game is lacking Maniacs content (Raidou and stuff) so basically you have to buy the $10 Dante DLC to get the Maniacs version...so it's almost full price for me lol.
 
Kouriozan

Kouriozan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
21,124
Oh no, I was really excited to play it again, hopefully Japan are beta testing and they'll fix it for the Western release, but I don't know Atlus's policies about patching games.
 
RoyalJL

RoyalJL

Member
Oct 28, 2017
55
Rove said:
I've used more than just Unity myself, and I spent my teen years modding some of my fav games using different frameworks and even churned out some of my own personal dev tools. Additionally my partner and I have been using Unreal Engine for a while now and are debating on restarting development of our current project on it, but overall I don't really think Unity really deserves to be written off as harshly/often as it is. Writing off the engine entirely outside of prototyping and ports when its helped produce some indie gems and has made game development a little more accessible to people seeking to get into it seems a bit much. On the topic of Nocturne, even with Unity I'm sure they could have optimized it some more to make it run better. For a larger studio I agree that Unity definitely isn't the best route to take, It's definitely got a fair share of issues but considering this is a remaster and not a full scale title it's more excusable for them to have used it. A lot of what seems to be wrong with this port seems like it was from carelessness and (seemingly) outsourcing quite a bit of this.
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As I said previously, I am not going to enter into the discussion.

(a little offtopic)

Now, advice for your game:

I see this problem with a lot of indies developers, Unity es very nice at the beginning, people are happy on how fast everything is going, but when the project start to get big is when you start to see all the problems, and how any process begin to be really slow.

Two years ago working on a project in unity for a chinese mobile game (i need to pay the bills) each time a had to build the game for testing took 15 minutes. My last project for another company, a puzzle game for multiple platforms made with my engine takes 7 seconds to build for phones. I repeat. 7 seconds.

Trust me, ask people who has FINISHED developing a similar game and ask for what problems they have. Find the correct engine, there are more options. Sometimes is good to have a little friction at the beginning of a project, good preproduction can save you a lot of problems in the future.
 
Rosebud

Rosebud

Two Pieces
Member
Apr 16, 2018
43,599
I think they will fix it before localization.

The real news to me it's the full price. Wat.
 
Marmoka

Marmoka

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,028
ナカノマツシンジ said:
The load times when selecting demons are awful. Every time you select a demon in the menus there's a half-second where the game just freezes, which makes rolling for skills far more tedious than it used to be. Beyond that there's just a general lack of polish with the frequent framerate drops in battles (where the PS2 version performed fine), 4:3 cutscenes, compressed music, lack of any new QOL life features (text log, auto-play for the now-voiced dialogue, mini-map) and the removal of existing ones like the ability to soft-reset. It's playable, but for this price it's extremely disappointing. The fact Atlus thinks this is worth ¥6,500 plus ¥2,500 DLC is ridiculous.
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After reading this, the audio issue becomes one of the least imporant problems of this port.

Why the hell did they release the game in such state? I hope they patch everything soon.
 
Kromeo

Kromeo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,871
Kouriozan said:
Oh no, I was really excited to play it again, hopefully Japan are beta testing and they'll fix it for the Western release, but I don't know Atlus's policies about patching games.
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They don't patch their games much but I can't think of many they release with major technical problems either
 
donpiano

donpiano

Member
Nov 15, 2017
667
ナカノマツシンジ said:
The load times when selecting demons are awful. Every time you select a demon in the menus there's a half-second where the game just freezes, which makes rolling for skills far more tedious than it used to be. Beyond that there's just a general lack of polish with the frequent framerate drops in battles (where the PS2 version performed fine), 4:3 cutscenes, compressed music, lack of any new QOL life features (text log, auto-play for the now-voiced dialogue, mini-map) and the removal of existing ones like the ability to soft-reset. It's playable, but for this price it's extremely disappointing. The fact Atlus thinks this is worth ¥6,500 plus ¥2,500 DLC is ridiculous.
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Do you think there's any chance of them patching up some of those issues later on?
 

Deleted member 48828

Account closed at user request
Banned
Oct 21, 2018
731
I'm gonna add my voice to the "Don't blame Unity" crowd. KH Melody of Memory is another recent Unity game that runs pretty flawlessly.

Considering this is the same company that didn't bother to replace the horribly compressed battle music, I'm guessing Atlus did something weird.
 
Kromeo

Kromeo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,871
Persona 3 also had very compressed music which was still used in the P5 dlc
 
Yuuber

Yuuber

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,153
What a shame. I knew a port of SMT3 was too good of a thing not to cave some caviats.
 
No Depth

No Depth

Member
Oct 27, 2017
18,298
Damn, I put 70 hours into the PSN version(PS3) and the emulation was pretty solid. Finished the game and most side content.

Sucks that nearly a decade later things are rough on an official port handling.
 

ナカノマツシンジ

Member
Sep 4, 2019
152
donpiano said:
Do you think there's any chance of them patching up some of those issues later on?
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Your guess is as good as mine. The game went gold more than a month before launch, but the day one patch still didn't fix the freezing issue. I'm sure they would have noticed it in testing, so maybe they just don't know how to fix it? I've never seen Atlus do performance patches and it's rare for them to really do anything beyond bug-fixes so I don't have much hope for anything else getting patched.
 
NeonZ

NeonZ

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,377
So, I guess the lack of additional content was because the port was outsourced all along? It's kind of weird to do that with a game like Nocturne considering how smaller games got significant additions.
 
werezompire

werezompire

Zeboyd Games
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
11,378
Ugh. I was really looking forward to this. Technical issues were bad enough, but I'm shocked that you still have to roll for inheritance - besides the portability of a Switch version that was the main reason why I wanted to double-dip and buy this.
 
fiendcode

fiendcode

Member
Oct 26, 2017
24,926
NeonZ said:
So, I guess the lack of additional content was because the port was outsourced all along? It's kind of weird to do that with a game like Nocturne considering how smaller games got significant additions.
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Not necessarily. SMT 1-2 GBA (also by ITL) had remastered graphics, audio, QOL changes and link cable demon exchanging. Doesn't really have much to do with being outsourced.
 
Dogui

Dogui

Member
Oct 28, 2017
8,813
Brazil
Sorry, but people blaming Unity just don't know shit about what they're saying.

It's obvious that Atlus did this remaster as a side job to SMT V with the least people/money they could. They're not a huge dev, this is kinda understandable, but holy fuck Atlus is pushing their luck with full price.
 
RainbowIslands

RainbowIslands

Member
Oct 25, 2017
718
Somewhere...
It flickers black for a fraction of a second during exploration and slowdown occurs during battle and menus quite often. At least the game is still fun and interesting enough to hook me in though.
 
Mars People

Mars People

Comics Council 2020
Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,197
Dogui said:
Sorry, but people blaming Unity just don't know shit about what they're saying.

It's obvious that Atlus did this remaster as a side job to SMT V with the least people/money they could. They're not a huge dev, this is kinda understandable, but holy fuck Atlus is pushing their luck with full price.
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But there has literally been a game developer in this thread who said Unity has several core problems and difficulties that are evidenced in this very game.

Are you saying he's wrong? Do you have different developer experience?
 

CanUKlehead

Member
Oct 30, 2017
3,406
Darn. Guess I'm firing up the PS2 download on my PS3 instead. That's a shame, was genuinely looking forward to this one.
 
wwm0nkey

wwm0nkey

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,576
Mars People said:
But there has literally been a game developer in this thread who said Unity has several core problems and difficulties that are evidenced in this very game.

Are you saying he's wrong? Do you have different developer experience?
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Ive worked with Unity for almost a decade now, it does have its faults, but I've never really had an issue I couldn't work around and the new DOTS system is fantastic and they finally fucking fixed the Time.Deltatime issue that was causing microstutters.

Current Unity project is a VR Surgical Pre-planning app that just went into production and we've used in 3 surgies (one of them essentially live). Before this I've worked with P&G and my local University. I will also be heading my city's IGDA chapter soon after the pandemic allows for meetings.


Now all that said, there is absolutely NO reason this should be using Unity if they still had the source code. It also doesn't invalidate the opinions of the other devs, engine choice needs to be like one of the first things you do and Unity just isn't the right choice in a few areas.
 
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DaleCooper

DaleCooper

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,852
I'm curious if Japanese people are more tolerant to technical issues in their games?

I'm just wondering why there is such a big delay on the US/EU release? I suppose all text is re-used, so there should be no need for new localization? Did Altus perhaps plan to fix this for the time when it's released worldwide?

I have questions.
 
FluxWaveZ

FluxWaveZ

Persona Central
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
10,890
DaleCooper said:
I'm curious if Japanese people are more tolerant to technical issues in their games?

I'm just wondering why there is such a big delay on the US/EU release? I suppose all text is re-used, so there should be no need for new localization? Did Altus perhaps plan to fix this for the time when it's released worldwide?

I have questions.
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There's still new voice acting, when it comes to localization.
 
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