Widescreen Gaming Forum

I emailed Digital Extremes luckily had a little more progress there. The first response I got was that they weren't involved with the PC version and that I'd have to talk to Aspyr. To which I basically replied "so you're cool with some other developer mangling your hard work, and if not, could you talk to them because the only people I can get to are idiot support reps?" (as nicely as I could) and luckily - no, they are not cool with it :wink:

This is the last email I got back from them:

An update…spoke to Aspyr and they said Noviy Disk is working on a patch. We’re forwarding this problem to include a fix if they didn’t know about it already.

So while Joe Schmoe support rep at Aspyr is obviously clueless, looks like there is progress being made somewhere.

I'm still not sure I'd put any faith in a patch ever coming out anyway, but it's a little ray of hope at least.

Cool, thanks for being so aggressive on the issue.

Related topic: some people are telling me that you can force AA onto this game through nHancer, but nothing is working for me. Anyone know the trick?

Latest info:
http://www.digitalextremes.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3342&postcount=23

(Onden = me BTW)

I gotta say apart from the widescreen bug, this game is a very good port! Short loadtimes, fluid graphics, no gameplay bugs and good controls! I like it. 8)

I got this message from them:

Hello Thomas,

Thank you for contacting Aspyr Tech Support!

Unfortunately your machine does not meet the minimum requirements for Dark Sector.

As stated on the game requirements, we don't support any 64 bit Operating System. Is your machine is running Windows XP 64 bit?


Your GeForce 9800 is also below the minimum requirements or not listed in our Supported Video Card list for this title. The game requires one of the following video cards:

SUPPORTED CHIPSETS
ATI RADEON X700
ATI RADEON X800
ATI RADEON X1300
ATI RADEON X1600
ATI RADEON X1900
ATI RADEON HD 2400
ATI RADEON HD 2600
ATI RADEON HD 2900
ATI RADEON HD 3450
ATI RADEON HD 3850
ATI RADEON HD 3870
ATI RADEON HD 4850
NVIDIA GEFORCE 6800
NVIDIA GEFORCE 7300
NVIDIA GEFORCE 7600
NVIDIA GEFORCE 7800
NVIDIA GEFORCE 8400
NVIDIA GEFORCE 8500
NVIDIA GEFORCE 8600
NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800
NVIDIA GEFORCE 9600
NVIDIA GEFORCE 260

SUPPORTED MOBILE CHIPSETS
NVIDIA GEFORCE GO 7900
NVIDIA GEFORCE GO 7950
NVIDIA GEFORCE GO 8400

NOTICE: Integrated video chipsets are not supported.


If you run the game with your current card, you may experience erratic gameplay behavior, such as a cropped or stretched screen view when using a widescreen resolution. Please make sure your machine meets all the requirements before attempting to run the game.

We can not provide support for machines that to not meet the game's requirements.

Sorry we could not resolve your issue.

Aspyr Tech Support

Hahaha... don't support a 9800? Wow.

Still waiting to see if anyone using 32bit and one of those cards has perfect widescreen. I would bet not.

I decided to install it on XP 32-bit and still got the same problem. I have a Radeon 4850 which is supposedly supported as well. So they're grasping at straws :P

They should really just come out and say" we dont want to help you because you only paid $20.00 for this game and its not worthy of support":P.

Yeah, they made their money off of the 360 version. ;)

I decided to install it on XP 32-bit and still got the same problem. I have a Radeon 4850 which is supposedly supported as well. So they're grasping at straws :P

Could you send in a support ticket and see what B.S. they throw at you? Thanks.

It's really sad how fantastically incompetant game tech support is. Their reply regarding the 9800 takes a rather special brand of ignorance.

Well I just got this as a further reply to my original support ticket:

We have been looking over the forum posts you sent us as well and have been trying to get a supported machine to have an error here and we can't see it. I personally even ran the game on a Vista 64 computer here with a supported video card and there was no problems with the widescreen resolutions and I went through all of them on one of the better cards on our supported list and a 30" Dell monitor. There was no resizing going on there.

Obviously we know it is happening since many people seem to be experiencing a similar problem and we have seen the screen shots on the forums and the ones that you have sent in. Unfortunately every single person involved in these issues is unsupported in one way or another. Even those forum posts continuously ask for someone with fully supported specs to come forward with the issue. We want the same thing. Someone on a supported 32 bit OS with a supported video card needs to submit a ticket here with their DX Diagnostic information so that we can observe what you are observing and do something about it.

You may personally find that our requirements are 'limited' and I assure you we would love to support this game on all configurations so that more people would be able to purchase and play the title. Unfortuantely those are the system specifications we tested and worked and had no widescreen issues or any other significant issues.

We would also like you to know that we are not trained to 'get rid of our customers as fast as possible' as was stated previously and on the forums. That is the farthest thing from the truth, at least for this company. We have looked into each of the emails you have sent in and have done tests which have not yielded errors for us here. Believe me when I say this company wants to resolve any real problems our release might have. However, we can't involve ourselves in issues happening on systems we have advertised as "not supported".

We will continue to look into it. If we find a problem on supported machines, then the problem can be fully appreciated and addressed accordingly.


Aspyr Tech Support

Don't really know what we can do. I admit that I didn't check whether Vista was supported before buying the game, mainly because I assume every game coming out nowadays supports it. Someone on the DE forums says they sent in a ticket using a supported system and got a reply saying that they'd look into it.

Plus, they're saying they tried it on a Vista 64 machine and the error isn't even happening. *Shrugs*

I can't believe there isn't a supported system out there... I mean, I know most hardcore gamers have gone over to Vista 64, but there has to be some holdouts... somewhere... right?

In any event, the stretching in 16:10 isn't so horrible you can't play the game I guess... I played about half of it that way, half in 4:3. I've been waiting to play more hoping for a patch, but as that seems more and more unlikely I guess I'll just finish the game now, once I'm done with Dark Athena.

It really is a fun game.

Hey guy, hope something can help you

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=155379

Don't really know what we can do. I admit that I didn't check whether Vista was supported before buying the game, mainly because I assume every game coming out nowadays supports it. Someone on the DE forums says they sent in a ticket using a supported system and got a reply saying that they'd look into it.

Plus, they're saying they tried it on a Vista 64 machine and the error isn't even happening. *Shrugs*

We already know for sure that the OS has nothing to do with this issue. People on 32-bit systems are getting the problem and there hasn't been a single post across any of the forums where this is being discussed from someone saying they're not getting the problem when running widescreen resolutions.

Meridith Braun from DE said that Noviy Disk is working on a patch and that the widescreen problem was included in the fixes (it's in the thread over on the official forums).

I'm fairly certain Asypr's support department is just completely clueless and kept in the dark about what's actually going on. The fact that they replied to person that a 9800 was below the minimum requirements for the game pretty much confirms it.

Hello Jonathan,

You should know that even though we still haven't been able to replicate the Widescreen issue on a supported machine here, we have spoken to our developer and a patch is now in the works to fix the problem.

Unfortuantely we don't have an exact date for the patch release, but hopefully it will be soon. Keep checking our website (http://support.aspyr.com) for news on the patch.


Aspyr Tech Support

:) Just have to play the waiting game now.

Patch ver 1.01 out, but only for german version and i dont know its fix the WS bug

I wouldn't hold my breath. According to the changelog (on GamersHell):

- Bugs in der Speicherfunktion der Game Settings unter Vista
- Bugs in der Lokalisierung
- Und Bugs im Tastatur-Layout

In other words:

- Bugs in memory function of Game Settings in Vista (?)
- Bugs in localization
- Bugs in keyboard layout

Nothing about the widescreen issues. Aspyr comes dangerously close to be added to my "never going to buy from again"-list. But let's wait for other patches first ...

Did I read that list of supported hardware wrong, or does it have the 4850 and GTX260 supported, but doesn't support 4870 and GTX280.

(Kind of like how that person who had an Nvidia 9800 but found it wasn't supported, even though the 9600 was)

WTH

Has this game been fixed yet?