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Shyotl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,272
Remember that thread where people thought that Sony was ready to start licensing the Decima engine to third parties on PC?
A game is more than an engine. It's possible to make an unstable PoS game on top of even the best engines out there. Just because there's a framework doesn't mean it is necessarily utilized well (or in some cases, at all). There's also a lot to a game that has nothing to do with the engine at all if it's anything particularly complex, as well. It's hard to say where the failing is.
 

Plotinus

Member
Oct 30, 2017
348
Boy oh boy, I knew this port was just a paid advertisement for Horizon 2 on the PS5, but I didn't think they'd just gratuitously insult the potential buyers with their complete apathy toward the entire thing*.

*Also known as the "Warcraft III: Reforged strategy"
 

dragonbane

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,587
Germany
Sony better blacklisting Virtuous on doing PC ports for them, if it's not their fault so give more time for them to work on the game, this shouldn't happen with such a important game(for Sony).
Virtuous is quite cheap probably since they mainly work as an outsourcing shop and they did a decent job with a few other PC ports such as Heavy Rain. So it's probably not their fault if Sony didn't give them enough time or budget. Can't be sure of course, but that's what my instinct says.
 

FluffyQuack

Member
Nov 27, 2017
1,354
I don't understand how that bug would come to be. I can see how you could have a pointer initialized to 0 and then you end up with a bug where you accidentally write to it before it actually points to anything. But that's not the case here, this is a constant.

Would this be caused by the compiler optimizing code and going "This always points to zero, so we will make it a constant" or it could be something else? I have a hard time seeing how this would exist in C++ because no one would write something like this: *NULL = 0xDEADCA67.
 

Jedi2016

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,751
I have a feeling this is just a case of:

Sony: "Hey, the release date's tomorrow."
Virtuos: "But we're not done yet!"
Sony: "Fuck it, release what you've got."

Can we get the thread title changed? It's not a debug build.
 

J75

Member
Sep 29, 2018
6,631
At this point, I think I'm better off dusting my PS4 copy and starting a new playthrough in there. This is beyond ridiculous.
 
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Shyotl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,272
I don't understand how that bug would come to be. I can see how you could have a pointer initialized to 0 and then you end up with a bug where you accidentally write to it before it actually points to anything. But that's not the case here, this is a constant.

Would this be caused by the compiler optimizing code and going "This always points to zero, so we will make it a constant" or it could be something else? I have a hard time seeing how this would exist in C++ because no one would write something like this: *NULL = 0xDEADCA67.

From a project I contribute to:
Code:
*null_ptr = 0xDEADBEEF; //Force an exception that will trigger crashpad.
It's how we handle failed critical assertions to generate crash reports, in release builds.

Edit: Also it's possible to happen via bug in code. Compiler may optimize out a null pointer if code that sets it to something else is omitted (absent, or the branch optimized out), resulting in the noted assembly (although the hexspeak makes it pretty likely it's probably intentional like the code snippet in this post.)
 
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theSoularian

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,254
I have a feeling this is just a case of:

Sony: "Hey, the release date's tomorrow."
Virtuos: "But we're not done yet!"
Sony: "Fuck it, release what you've got."

Can we get the thread title changed? It's not a debug build.

Yeah...It's very poor showing of Sony and Guerrilla to let their flagship game release in a state like that. Just makes you wonder what hell happened?
 

sibarraz

Prophet of Regret - One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
18,132
Don't know why Guerrilla/Sony/Whatever didn't delayed the game more, there is no rush on releasing it now if they need to polish it more, specially when a game like Horizon on Steam will always be huge news
 

Toad King

Member
Oct 27, 2017
942
Chicago
From a project I contribute to:
Code:
*null_ptr = 0xDEADBEEF; //Force an exception that will trigger crashpad.
It's how we handle failed critical assertions to generate crash reports, in release builds.
Chrome has a special "about:inducebrowsercrashforrealz" URL that crashes the browser by doing a null-pointer dereference just like that. Or at least it did it that way in the past, looking at more recent code it looks like it just crashes by failing an assert now.
 

Nekrono

Member
May 17, 2018
565
I remember watching the PC features trailer when they officially announced it and thinking "man this port looks top notch! looks like they know what we want" I mean Ultrawide support, unlocked framerate, K&M, benchmark tools, graphic options that go above the console release. I remember looking at it and thinking this is a day 1 for me.

Boy how mistaken I was, even with the bad performance and all of the issues people have reported I think the port has this lack of polish that even if it ran great it would still rub me the wrong way, the constant stutters and especially the assets loading in or reappearing after camera cuts in cinematics is really jarring and honestly if breaks my experience.
 
Dec 12, 2017
3,000
Sony set the release date and gave the stamp of approval on the build. I guess I won't be buying Sony published games on PC any time soon. Poor form.
 

GrrImAFridge

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,682
Western Australia
www.dsogaming.com

Despite reports, the PC version of Horizon Zero Dawn is not a debug build

Yesterday, a report surfaced on Reddit, suggesting that the PC version is actually a debug build of the game. However, that's not the case.

Not to plant my flag on either side of the matter, but his claim that he had access to a pre-release build for "weeks" strikes me as suspect. There's been no photomode-based promotion for the port, so why would Sony have given "virtual photographers" access to the game well ahead of actual reviewers?

Edit: That's a rhetorical question, just to be clear.


Edit edit: It's been pointed out to me that GG recently shared some of his screenshots, and one of them clearly shows snow deformation.
 
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low-G

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,144
Sony set the release date and gave the stamp of approval on the build. I guess I won't be buying Sony published games on PC any time soon. Poor form.

If this is how they treat PC gamers imagine how they treat a captive audience. Yeesh.

Sony of course has published some real buggy messes in the pass. I guess when something's not going well they cut the losses.
 

NeoandGeo

Banned
Nov 17, 2017
43
User Banned (Permanent): Advocating piracy; prior ban for advocating piracy and a severe ban for sexism. Account in junior phase.
Guess I will be deleting the 37GB torrent that just got done downloading.
 

Nooblet

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,640
Uuhm in the eu you can return anything(well except the obvious) in the first 2 weeks from purchase date without giving a reason for doing so
That's only true for purchases directly made from a steam/GoG/Epic/PSN/XBL account, in case of third party retailers where you get a key that you redeem on the platform you play the game on you can't really return it if you've already assigned the key to your account on that platform.
 

Nooblet

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,640
Per Wikipedia:

FNTaYk4.png
Tbh bunch of those are pretty good like BF1, BFV, Shadow of Tomb Raider, Rise of Tomb Raider, Jurassic World Evolution and ofcourse TLoU Remastered and Nathan Drake collection. Though I suspect in all those cases the main studio did a lot of heavy lifting as well.

Then there are some mixed ports like Watch Dogs 2 and Blops 4, which aren't really bad but they do have some problems.
 

julia crawford

Took the red AND the blue pills
Member
Oct 27, 2017
35,343
Hum people think it's a debug build because it's logging errors?

Who doesn't forget to clean up debug logs once in a while.
 

NoWayOut

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,075
After Death Stranding, I figured we'd be safe with Horizon. It may not support DLSS 2.0 but it would at least scale nicely. So I bought it on GMG to save a few bucks.

Now I'm stuck with a crap port and no way to get a refund. Live and learn.

Me and you both! I usually wait for DF tech analysis before buying new releases on day one, but given how well the PS4 Pro ran and the quality of the Death Stranding port, I thought this was a given. Lesson learned! No more preorders no matter what.
 

shinken

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,917
After Death Stranding, I figured we'd be safe with Horizon. It may not support DLSS 2.0 but it would at least scale nicely. So I bought it on GMG to save a few bucks.

Now I'm stuck with a crap port and no way to get a refund. Live and learn.
Sony's first party PC games will never have DLSS, since they will always partner with AMD for obvious reasons.

amdzerodawn.jpg
 

Shyotl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,272
Yeah, this thread is kind of embarrassing.
Would 'real' debug builds for a full game even make sense these days? Yet alone to even distributing such? It'd run so slow to be naught unplayable. Most 'debug' builds I see for performance intensive applications seem to just be tick a few processor definitions to enable more verbose logging, enabling more assertions, and maybe tone down compiler optimizations(even in just a specific file) just a little bit. Not going full bore debug mode, outside of an individual dev working on a very specific bug, like hunting down heap corruption or something.

Unit tests, logging, targeted strict assertions, and smaller test applications seem to cover most cases, and while annoying and more cryptic, one can still walk through prod code in a debugger.
 

Carlius

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,000
Buenos Aires, Argentina
All the upset PC fans will surely buy a PS5 now to play the sequel.
U know...maybe i would have laughed at u two days ago...but god damn is the game good. I just want it in all its glory. Its so good, i may consider buying a ps5. Only done that sht once in my life, and it was cause of bloodborne.

This game is pure gold though.
 

dep9000

Banned
Mar 31, 2020
5,401
How did they fuck this up so bad? My hype for future pc ports of ps4/5 games is at rock bottom right now if this is the effort they're gonna put in
 

Nezacant

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,085
I was one of the few lucky ones that was able to play the game with reasonable performance. Not anymore it seems. I'm about 20 hours in and now I can't play the game more than 5 minutes without the game tanking in performance to unplayable levels. I'm talking 4FPS in game and in menus. It's difficult to even exit the game.