Widescreen Gaming Forum

Great response to Ibrin from Ken Levine...

These are good times for the WSGF. 8)

graylantern,

I just replied to your post. Thanks for the suggestion. Didn't expect to see Ken show up in their forums. I sent him a PM and copied the email that I sent to Elizabeth regarding the issue, where I apologies for how this spun out of control, and said we'd love to help/partner with them in any way we could.

Thanks again... Ibrin

Cheers,

Good to see Ken take you (and widescreen support) seriously enough to do the whole PM thing with ya.

I hope Ken realises the only reason it 'spun out of control' was because of the trolls who dragged the situation out. As we know there was never a question in our minds about the problem we just wanted to make our voice heard and wait for a rational reply. Many people without a problem just didn't seem happy letting us do that in a calm and direct manner.

And that is the problem with blind devotees who will never hear a bad word said about 'their favourite game' they jump on every problem that is reported as if we make this shit up for the hell of it.

A relief it's all (being) sorted and you/paddy and Racer_s get some well deserved attention, and WSG (which I've visited for ages even before I was a widescreen gamer) is put on the map a bit more to give a voice to the issues that wouldn't be issues if people checked their WS implementations.

As much as I nagged and nagged about the issue, I doubt It would have been taken seriously without WSG and RACER_S's 'fix' to highlight it and back it up.

I guess no company likes there being a 'fix' out for their game that they didn't make because it shows somewhere to some people somthing *is* broken and that could be a large part of why they bothered listening.

Thanks all, it's been a 'fun' couple of days.

Great response to Ibrin from Ken Levine...

These are good times for the WSGF. 8)

I can confirm that I did get a PM from Ken. He asked for my email address, so that we can provide input to the FOV patch. His response to the "fire storm" was "shit happens" and overall his outlook is "let's turn lemons into lemonade." Non-WSGF trolls aside, I think that we have come out of this looking good, at least with the folks from.

I found you guys pretty soon after the whole BioShock widescreen controversy started, and I just wanted to give you all a tip of the hat for pushing so hard on the issue. Greylantern, Gabbo, et al, have done God's work over on 2K's forums by trying to explain the problems with the way 2K tried to implement "widescreen". How you found the patience to deal with some of the garbage over there is beyond me. Also, a big thank you to Racer_s for your timely fix.
Thought I'd throw this out there as a tribute to Gabbo's fine work. Apologies in advance if anyone else has already made one of these:

Hi guys,

Any news from Racer_S on a fix for us DX10 widescreen gamers?

Thanks!

Woland

The 2K official forums have gone to $hit......... literally.

Man that is sad. :(

I'm just wondering if I'll ever be able to play this game in vista 64bit DX10 with a FOV fix. :(

[quote][quote]... In the end they're doing the right thing, and that's what matters.

I wouldn't so much call it "the right thing", as it is more of an apology. Just because you say "I'm sorry" for making a mistake, does not erase the fact that you made the mistake in the first place.

It'd be like a murderer turning themselves into the police. It's a good thing to do, the right thing under those circumstances, but it still doesn't excuse the fact that you killed someone.

The ideal "right thing" to do, would be never to have had these problems in the first place. You don't get an award for saying "I'm sorry" when you make a mistake. You are supposed to do it.

And quite frankly, judging by the initial PR responses, we probably wouldn't be getting a resolution to this issue if there wasn't such a large community backlash.

Again, I am still glad they are doing it. Many companies don't even attempt to "make amends" and just ignore the problems all together. But just don't give them too much credit as they will be trying to do the bare minimum possible to quiet everyone down, nothing more.

Aggies

I take your point, and I agree with you about the backlash, but comparing poor widescreen support with, well, murder is, in my humble opinion, just a bit much. Yes, I take widescreen very seriously, in as much as I take computer gaming seriously, but I don't see that this is an ethical issue, per say (although you could argue that 2k was slightly unethical in initially denying that there was a problem).

As far as I'm concerned, this whole episode ended very happily, thanks to Racer and the WSGF, and take2 for their belated recognition of the widescreen gaming community.

Hi guys,

Any news from Racer_S on a fix for us DX10 widescreen gamers?

Thanks!

Woland

... just a few posts above yours ...

Hey welcome to the forum ... 8)

Racer_S is finding it difficult to sort the DX10 issue ... he doesn't have a DX10 card.

And I might add he doesn't have a Widescreen ... :shock:

2K have kindly offered to send him an 8800 ... 8)

Hopefully he will have it sorted soon.

Welcome to the forum ... 8)

Hey paddywak/racer_s I'm a developer, got vista, 8800, dx10 etc. bioshock rocks except for the screwx0red up fov. i believe the reason the patch isn't working for dx10/vista is a minor disparity in offset locations between the dx9 and dx10 rending code pipelines. if i can get the offsets you guys patch for the dx9 engine i will be able to approximate where the dx10 offsets will be and be able to conjure up a patch. guys get all sensistive about source code etc i would know since i am a dev myself. personally i don't care if the code is crap or uncommented etc, i justwanna help myself and the non-4:3 community running this game on dx10 to get proper fov. let me know if you're interested in sending me some info's. I've written a few asm hacks/cracks in the past, furthermore, i won't claim this to be my own creation :) offsets you're patching would work -- source code would be better if possible. thanks dude. rock on with an insanely useful forum!!! guess i will sit and play wow until dx10 works or i can work on it; i refuse to sacrifice uber special effects for FOV so i'd rather not play.

Hello ... antivoid
Welcome to the forum ... :D
I need to talk to Racer_S about that and he won't be about for another 6 hours or so ... time zones etc. .... 8)

antivoid: DMA Address :(

Ken Levine talks to the PC Gamer folks about BioShock widescreen issues on their podcast: http://www.pcgamerpodcast.com/

Widescreen discussion starts about 20:00 minutes in and lasts for at least 5 minutes. He mentions Racer_S' fix, the upcoming widescreen patch, etc.

Unfortunately it's a phone interview and very bad quality / kinda hard to listen to.

I listened ...

On the whole nothing new on the Widescreen issue but Ken did promise the Widescreen issue will be fixed ... but no time scale ...

Kudos to them for "hearing" the widescreen community even if it isn't the way they "designed" the game.

Grats to everyone involved with the patch, and getting 2K's official attention/resolution of the issue!

Hopefully other developers (EA...) will take 2K's example and support widescreen gamers better in the future?

[quote]graylantern,

I just replied to your post. Thanks for the suggestion. Didn't expect to see Ken show up in their forums. I sent him a PM and copied the email that I sent to Elizabeth regarding the issue, where I apologies for how this spun out of control, and said we'd love to help/partner with them in any way we could.

Thanks again... Ibrin

Cheers,

Good to see Ken take you (and widescreen support) seriously enough to do the whole PM thing with ya.

I hope Ken realises the only reason it 'spun out of control' was because of the trolls who dragged the situation out. As we know there was never a question in our minds about the problem we just wanted to make our voice heard and wait for a rational reply. Many people without a problem just didn't seem happy letting us do that in a calm and direct manner.

And that is the problem with blind devotees who will never hear a bad word said about 'their favourite game' they jump on every problem that is reported as if we make this shit up for the hell of it.

A relief it's all (being) sorted and you/paddy and Racer_s get some well deserved attention, and WSG (which I've visited for ages even before I was a widescreen gamer) is put on the map a bit more to give a voice to the issues that wouldn't be issues if people checked their WS implementations.

As much as I nagged and nagged about the issue, I doubt It would have been taken seriously without WSG and RACER_S's 'fix' to highlight it and back it up.

I guess no company likes there being a 'fix' out for their game that they didn't make because it shows somewhere to some people somthing *is* broken and that could be a large part of why they bothered listening.

Thanks all, it's been a 'fun' couple of days.

You've done a good job fighting off the trolls at 2kgames who had no issues and only partisipated for arguing sake. Those people created much more negativity and camps around these issues then was frankly nessesary. Our goal was never for this to become a flamewar between people with issues and trolls, but for 2kgames to recognize the issues and deal with them. This 2Kgames have done with promising an upcoming patch and many have pulled out of the discussion over there, since the goal has been achieved.
I see the trolls are still active there trying to add fuel to a war that they created themselves. I'm from Norway, which have trolls as a part of folklore for centuries. We say: "don't feed the trolls!". :lol:
Everyone still over there arguing with those people, just pull out with dignity and leave them discussing with themselves. Its not that they don't understand people have issues, its just that they don't want to understand. 2Kgames understood and dealt with it, and thats the only important people over there that needed to understand this.

Cheers! :D

Hey the story made it to Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror blog:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000937.html

He has a nice picture describing Line of Sight and Point of View.
Check it out...

Hey the story made it to Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror blog:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000937.html

He has a nice picture describing Line of Sight and Point of View.
Check it out...

great link :D

update!

- Whats new in v1.2 on 8/25/07?
*added support for directx 10 mode

http://dl.tocaedit.com/bioshockdFOV.zip


only paddy tested it, so let me know if it works for you

Testing on Vista 32 and working like a charm so far!

Racer, you are DA MAN! :)

Thanks Racer_S! It works!

Edit: The distortion I was seeing was intended distortion of the wooden beams in the Farmer's Market area. ;)