Bioshock: artistic vision - or not as the case may be

Tolyngee · Post by **Tolyngee** » 02 Sep 2007, 10:54

Hey bud ... I probably came across a bit harsh ...
I put it up in red so others wouldn't start the spoiler thing ...
Spoilers should be done like this ... http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/8071

Most of us completely agree with your thoughts on widescreen and TH2G ... which is partly why the WSGF exists.

We need to let the devs know ...

::TrueWS ... :WWTH2Go ... :savews

Well, you have a right to be harsh, though...

I don't think this is in any way "spoiler" material here, but seriously, the demo gives all the info you need to figure it all out...

(although I think they made a goof around beginning of the game... I'll need to play it in its entirety to be certain, but I think it's a goof...)

(there appears to be a break from the plotline that doesn't need to be there... but, again, I'd need to play the entire game to know how much of a break from regular it appears to be...)

the above is so vague though that I really doubt it needs to be hidden as "spoiler" material...

As far as hiding spoilers go: Unfortunately, I am in the same boat as Destructo-Bot. I can read ALL of the text on that page! I just have a damn good monitor! :D

So I am going to have to figure out if I can do what Packerfan/Flo suggests and do some custom tag or something...

But, I guess I got upset about Bioshock as it looks great, was coming out right about my birthday (today, actually...), which seemed great as I knew I had an extended weekend coming up, and didn't need to take any work off to be able to play and finish the game... Then all the garbage about Bioshock support, and the forum mods, uhhh... But, in the end, my extended weekend got cut short by work, first they made it only three days, then two... So I doubt I would have bothered with Bioshock already anyway...

But, it does leave me torn... I won't pirate it (unless it is just to get around activation/SecuROM issues, but Securom is on my machine now, so oh well!), because I want to support devs... I've bought at least a dozen games the past year that the boxes are unopened, just so I am certain the devs got their due, and I can just get around to it when/if I ever do... id will probably forever get my dough...

But I'd like to see the game...

But, I certainly want to send a message by not giving the devs their due until they properly support what should have been there on release... The longer is takes them to patch this, the more I wonder...

I love that the hack's available, but buying it now sends no message to the devs! :?

And, for the life of me, the more I think about it, I am not certain that cropping (although maybe, just maybe, stretching) is an acceptable way to support widescreen for any game, first-person or third-person perspective... For a quick example: Joust and Pitfall 2 (I'm going way back in my memory banks to platform games that I have played, sorry!) would be acceptable as stretched, to me... There's nothing to gain by H+ (P2 might actually show you what you're not supposed to see yet, actually...), and V-, well, you lose information from the top and bottom that you were meant to see... So, while we know cropping just isn't right for first-person, cropping doesn't seem to sit well for third-person, either... So, how can cropping be acceptable to MS?

I know stretching sucks, but there have been past games where there's no extra info to show, and no info to lose, so playing in a square box or stretching seem the only options... Most of the 'arcade classics' would fit in this category...

But, AGAIN, for the life of me, I can't seem to find a game title in my mind where cropping seems acceptable... Either your FOV is going to go whack, or the 'field of play' is going to shrink... So, what gives? How could MS ever suggest in their SDK (or whatever that was) that cropping is an option for supporting WS?

Lastly, sorry to any devs/support staff got my 'moron' comment... But every time I try to come up with an intelligent answer as to why the devs might have thought they were getting their WS support right, I just confuse myself...

They either weren't thinking, or thought we'd never notice...

So, they weren't thinking...

How can you be a rocket scientist and put together this game, and miss the simple fact that playing the game on a TH2G, your FOV is just going to be utterly FUBARed!? :roll:

Then again, this tallscreen support does allow me to put my monitor sideways and make the characters almost lifesize!

I'd imagine triplehead tallscreen might open a gateway to another dimension!

Oh, and I love Gabbo's new emoticon!

grambo · Post by **grambo** » 04 Sep 2007, 00:32

Is there still no official patch from 2K? What are those fools doing, it should take a few hours to patch.

Post by **skipclarke** » 04 Sep 2007, 05:09

Is there still no official patch from 2K? What are those fools doing, it should take a few hours to patch.

The devs have contacted the WSGF, and we are working with them to help ensure that the upcoming patch supports widescreen to our standards. They have publicly promised that the patch is coming, and I can confirm that they are working towards it.

grambo · Post by **grambo** » 04 Sep 2007, 13:08

[quote]Is there still no official patch from 2K? What are those fools doing, it should take a few hours to patch.

The devs have contacted the WSGF, and we are working with them to help ensure that the upcoming patch supports widescreen to our standards. They have publicly promised that the patch is coming, and I can confirm that they are working towards it.

Awesome! Thanks for the update. It's also great to see 2K reaching out to the experts as recognized by the gaming community at large (WSGF) to make sure they get it right. I'll be buying the game retail the day their patch comes out.

infernus · Post by **infernus** » 04 Sep 2007, 15:11

[quote]Is there still no official patch from 2K? What are those fools doing, it should take a few hours to patch.

The devs have contacted the WSGF, and we are working with them to help ensure that the upcoming patch supports widescreen to our standards. They have publicly promised that the patch is coming, and I can confirm that they are working towards it.

Holy crap. I eagerly await patch day.

Googlestater · Post by **Googlestater** » 04 Sep 2007, 16:24

Is there still no official patch from 2K? What are those fools doing, it should take a few hours to patch.

It also has to pass Q&A. Even if irrational finished the patch in a few hours, it could take weeks to pass 2k's Q&A.
Surely you've seen this before? A dev will occasionally announce a long looked for patch being ready and that they've sent it to Q&A and it will take a while longer to come out.
This is also sometimes the cause of dev's announcing that a patch will be out be a certain date, but it doesn't happen, it might be stuck in Q&A.

Now I don't know if the patch is ready to go or not, but thats often why patches aren't quicker

ab2c4 · Post by **ab2c4** » 04 Sep 2007, 19:13

With this widescreen FOV Hack/Fix maybe I am misunderstanding how it works. Based on what I read, I should be able to take 1280x1024 resolution and display it in 16:10 format (just like what the 360 does), is that correct?

If so, I have tried the hack but it doesn't do this. Am I doing something wrong or is this not what the hack was intended to do? Thanks in advance.

If it matters, I am running v1.2 of the hack, Vista Ultimate 64-bit, and 8600gts, and a widescreen 20" monitor that supports 1680x1050 and 1280x1024.

ab2c4 · Post by **ab2c4** » 04 Sep 2007, 19:25

Oh, and before anybody says, I tried and would love to play bioshock at 1680x1050 but the frame rate dips a little too low at times (mid teens) with this 8600gts.

Tolyngee · Post by **Tolyngee** » 05 Sep 2007, 03:01

[quote]Is there still no official patch from 2K? What are those fools doing, it should take a few hours to patch.

It also has to pass Q&A. Even if irrational finished the patch in a few hours, it could take weeks to pass 2k's Q&A.
Surely you've seen this before? A dev will occasionally announce a long looked for patch being ready and that they've sent it to Q&A and it will take a while longer to come out.
This is also sometimes the cause of dev's announcing that a patch will be out be a certain date, but it doesn't happen, it might be stuck in Q&A.

Now I don't know if the patch is ready to go or not, but thats often why patches aren't quicker

http://www.tallscreengamingforum.com/

The big news story on the front page tells the whole story...

Apparently the founders of TSGF are very upset that in their own QAing of this supposed patch, proper support of tallscreen is now broken!

Some complained that they couldn't count all the tiles on the ceiling and floor at the same time anymore. Others complained of how the wrist tattoo is now stretched and distorted. Others noted how their hand has now completely disappeared!

One complained that within moments of installing the patch, they could no longer take being dizzy and so overly disoriented; the view was just now too unnatural to navigate the Bioshock world.

Some believe that the while the horizontal FOV can expand and contract along with your screen width, the vertical FOV now seems to be hard-coded at some unknown degree angle.

Devs and support personnel are on the boards, trying to let all TSGF members known that the vertical FOV is also indeed now variable and adjustable, but TSGF members are having trouble deciphering their posts that are written starting from top to bottom, going left to right...

It appears there's a master TSGF coder/hacker there, named S_RECAR... He's saying that the code is so unusual to him; it's like it was written sideways! While he noted it would take some time to re-write his hex editor to deal with this sideways code, he quickly noted how the code looked so natural when viewed with his head rolled 90 degrees on its side!

Unfortunately, he was quickly banned for such blasphemy, so now the TSGF community is up in arms, as no hack for their tallscreen ways looks likely in the near future...

But help is near; it appears one TSGF member was able to decipher a post from the 2K forums that suggests how to correctly install the patch...

"if the patch does not apply itself correctly, you must re-format your hard drive, and attempt another re-install... It is very, very important that during this process, you make no attempt to un-install Bioshock first!"

But TSGF members aren't quite so believing; one has noted that they've attempted this process four times now, with nothing ever changing.

But 2K made it clear that just hadn't attempted enough re-installs.

"Trust us, on the sixth install attempt, you will see a very noted change in your install experience!"

2K and the devs have gone on record to say that's its the only way they know of to fix any and all tallscreen problems...

:wink:

Googlestater · Post by **Googlestater** » 05 Sep 2007, 03:37

With this widescreen FOV Hack/Fix maybe I am misunderstanding how it works. Based on what I read, I should be able to take 1280x1024 resolution and display it in 16:10 format (just like what the 360 does), is that correct?

If so, I have tried the hack but it doesn't do this. Am I doing something wrong or is this not what the hack was intended to do? Thanks in advance.

If it matters, I am running v1.2 of the hack, Vista Ultimate 64-bit, and 8600gts, and a widescreen 20" monitor that supports 1680x1050 and 1280x1024.

1280x1024 is 5:4
1680x1050 is 16:10

If you are running 5:4 its not going to be much of a widescreen anyway. You would be running it in "tallscreen" :)

Anyway, just slide the sliders, and hit the * on numberpad to enable what you've set the sliders to

Googlestater · Post by **Googlestater** » 05 Sep 2007, 03:39

http://www.tallscreengamingforum.com

I wonder if you are the one who registered that domain :)

BTW, I suggest only visiting that site in firefox, it looks like one of those that could be loaded with who knows what.

Edit: LOL odd, the site changes every time you reload it. And sometimes it has a search word of bioshock on it, so obviously tallscreen is being associated with bioshock. lol

BlueMak · Post by **BlueMak** » 05 Sep 2007, 09:41

1680x1050 is 16:10, NOT 16:9

MrMusic · Post by **MrMusic** » 07 Sep 2007, 22:25

[quote]Shitsticks and arsefeathers.

I thought this might be the case. And I don't think you can re-map keys that don't originally exist. Damn my stoopid http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/keyboards/keyboard/devices/192&cl=us,en]poncey keyboard.

You can using the program I linked above (I was specifically linking it because the guy who found it useful had a logitech keyboard without a number pad). I dunno about the others, but its quite possible they do it too.

I have the same keyboard with the same problem, but I resolved it by plugging in one of my old PS2 ones that has a keypad. My MB let's me have both the USB one and PS2 attached at the same time, I had to reboot for it to see the wired keyboard but they coexist well, not sure if the same would be true for your setup. If you don't have one around you should be able to pick up a cheap one for under $10, I know this isn't really a fix but neither is the FOV hack, which works great BTW!

For all those out there that are unsure how to use it I found that setting both sliders to 0.6 works quite well, setting them at different ratios from one another distorts your view, like you're looking through a fisheye lens. Setting them to the same value retains the same aspect ratio and either zooms if you increase the value or zooms out if you decrease the value, leaving the value set to 1.0 does nothing, you aren't changing anything.

Just my 2 cents, hope this helps.

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 07 Sep 2007, 22:52

Hello MrMusic ... welcome to the forum ... 8)

For all those out there that are unsure how to use it I found that setting both sliders to 0.6 works quite well, setting them at different ratios from one another distorts your view,

Those that are unsure how to use it should read the detailed report or the solution page as there are instructions there too .... :wink:

The correct settings for the FOV tool ... from the detailed report and also mentioned on the solution page :wink:

I found that 16:9 users should set it to:
Width FOV: 0.75
Height FOV: 0.75

16:10 users:
Width FOV: 0.84
Height FOV: 0.84

(these looked almost perfect when overlapped with the standard 4:3 screenshot)

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/8028

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11711

masumo · Post by **masumo** » 14 Sep 2007, 04:36

[quote]Is there still no official patch from 2K? What are those fools doing, it should take a few hours to patch.

The devs have contacted the WSGF, and we are working with them to help ensure that the upcoming patch supports widescreen to our standards. They have publicly promised that the patch is coming, and I can confirm that they are working towards it.

Great news! I'd rather get the game for 360, but if the patch is PC only I'll get that version. Can you provide any confirmation regarding a 360 patch? (sorry if off-topic, as it seems these forums are more PC centric).

Apple · Post by **Apple** » 14 Sep 2007, 04:40

Hey Masumo, welcome to the forum.

2k said they were looking into a patch for the 360 version as well. So lets hope they do it.

This forum is for all widescreen users. :D

grambo · Post by **grambo** » 15 Sep 2007, 01:00

3+ weeks since they announced a FOV patch will be coming and still nothing. This is getting pretty dumb, I hope the patch comes out before Crysis/Orange Box etc. are released or I might just skip it until it's bargain bin prices.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 15 Sep 2007, 11:32

First they've got to do the patch (which ain't really hard)... but then it's got to go through publisher QA. And if the publisher is feeling reticent or pissy (or are just plain bogged down in QA for other games that are nearing release) then it can get delayed...

Snipe3000 · Post by **Snipe3000** » 25 Sep 2007, 02:37

I'm not sure what Im doing wrong, but the FOV fix does not work for me. I have Vista 32bit and 8800 Ultra with latest drivers and running the game in DX10.
Anyone else having a problem with this?

grambo · Post by **grambo** » 29 Sep 2007, 20:57

2 more weeks, still no patch :(. Oh well, with TF2 beta and ET:QW Demo I don't have time for Bioshock now anyway. It will be a bargain title by the time they get this patch out and I buy it :)

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