Differences in PC/Console Versions, Modding Community, and Game Engine

[Hannar]

Differences in PC/Console Versions, Modding Community, and Game Engine



07-22-2011 11:28 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...=4290#post4290

To be clear: the PC version of Reckoning has been entirely built in-house at BHG concurrently with the console version. It's not some third-party port of a console game to PC.

The PC version of Reckoning has some different UI elements (more on that later) to capitalize on the advantages of the keyboard/mouse control scheme, but it also runs great with a controller if you'd prefer to play it that way. As Ngruk said, you might be very surprised by just how good it feels with a controller.

In any case, which version I'd recommend people play comes down to which system(s) they own and what control scheme they're more comfortable with. If you like the tactile feel of a controller, playing on a console (or on PC with a 360 controller) is the way to go. If you prefer the speed and precision afforded by mouse/keyboard, then that may be your best bet.

Ultimately all three versions of Reckoning (PC, 360, PS3) are a lot of fun, so I'm pretty confident you're going to love the game regardless of which system/control scheme you choose to play it on.

08-15-2011 10:34 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...=7476#post7476

The PC controls are quite good right now and we intend to even make them better as we continue to polish the game. We hold regular official playtests and we test both PC and console controls regularly. Remember the heritage at BHG and 38, we are all old school PC developers and have not forgotten our roots! The game does not require a controller to play. If you are a PC player, I recommend you play the game with a mouse and keyboard. If you are a console player, I recommend the controller.

09-07-2011 11:57 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...Reckoning+Team

I'm just curious if you guys can talk a little bit about the development of how the PS3 version is being handled. Is it being developed in house, or being outsourced? Mainly, I'm just curious if all three versions are being handled by the team at BHG.

Much to my delight, all three versions are being created in-house at Big Huge Games. We are working as much as possible to maintain a high level of quality across each platform, so all of our developers are encouraged to make sure their work runs well on all three platforms.

Fun fact: if my office ever gets cold, I can close the door and turn on all of my PS3 and Xbox360 dev kits and it’ll get nice and toasty in here in no time.

09-07-2011 11:57 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...Reckoning+Team

What programming languages do you use? C++ or C# or something else? IDE or texmate/notepad or other?

It would be nearly impossible to create a world as large and detailed as what we have in Reckoning without both a powerful engine to show it as well as a powerful set of tools to create it. In order to help things run as smoothly as possible, we try our best to choose the best tool for the job and that means using a variety of languages. Specifically, our engine is written using C/C++ and our tools are currently written mostly in C# and C++ with a smattering of other languages mixed in where appropriate.

As for the tools we use to write our code, the more the software enables us to quickly write better code, the more we like it. Personally, for C\C++\C# I use Visual Studio with the Visual Assist X and MetalScroll plugins and when writing shader code (code that runs on the graphics card to control how things look when we draw them) I use Notepad++.

09-14-2011 10:02 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...2905#post12905

What is your opinion on community moding and will you be supporting it in any way?

Unfortunately, we will not be providing mod tools with Reckoning. With Reckoning being our first game in the Kingdoms of Amalur franchise, we’ve decided to focus 100% on making the game itself as good as it can possibly be rather than diverting resources toward the development of mod tools (which due to some technical aspects of how our tools pipeline works, would be a massive undertaking). I come from a mod background myself (got my start in the industry after working on a Dungeon Siege mod called "Lazarus") and I absolutely love the mod community, so it pains me that we’re not officially supporting them, but in the end of the day, I think this was the right call for us on this game.

That said, please note that we’re not against mods. We’re just not providing official tools for them. Folks in the community generally find ways to mod a game even when there are no official tools, and if that happens with Reckoning, well, nothing would make us happier.

09-15-2011, 07:40 PM
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/other...ml#post2138429

One of the early requests from me to Ian and Joe was this. PLEASE do not port to the PC as an afterthought, let the PC players feel like the game was made for their platform too.

Honestly I think they did a fantastic job. My problem is from day 1 I've always played the game on console and am so used to the XBox control scheme that, again, it's going to be the first game I've ever done this for, XBox controller on the PC SKU.

09-21-2011 01:43 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...Reckoning+Team

This question is for Programmers and Designers related to the engine. Hypothetically, you have the BH game engine and it's always evolving as you create the game. Is it designed to work in conjunction with 3rd party software such as UDK? If UDK comes out with some awesome new feature say 6 months into development of your engine, what type of work is involved to bring the new functionality into the current build? Are you forced into working with one engine for several years of development? If so, how do you handle breakthrough or new features if they would have made your game better?

I could probably write a small novella (I guess turning it from novella into short story, but I digress) on this question, but I will exercise restraint. The Big Huge Engine is in fact made to work well with some 3rd party software, but not along the lines of a complete tool chain/engine package like the UDK (because we have our own tool chain/engine already). Our engine is designed to swap out middleware packages as needed for the particular project. We tend to use middleware for things like audio, video playback and physics. We evaluate different middleware offerings in the beginning of a project, and thus need to drop new middleware in quickly and easily. Once we have found a solution that fits our requirements, it generally stays throughout the life of the project.

Our engine, as most do, has evolved over time to fit the needs of the project and environment at hand. Years ago our technology was PC-centric and geared toward RTS titles, but has been completely revamped to take into account all the demands that cross-platform RPG development brings. Creating a game of this scope requires a sharp focus on not only the engine, but the tool chain that goes with it. We have developed an asset pipeline that allows dozens of people to work on hundreds of thousands of assets pretty much in unison. This is one of the big advantages to having our own technology: as we find deficiencies we have experts in-house that can quickly change or adapt features based on the needs of the company or project. So any awesome features that come into play are done by us.

Of course, there are always neat and shiny new technologies that crop up during development. Determining if and when we implement these comes down to an internal discussion that weighs the 'coolness' of the new feature against what it means for the game. For example, some new graphics technologies might seem fairly simple to implement on the surface, but have potential impacts on the performance of the title, authoring or reworking of assets, or introduction of new bugs. The later in development the game gets, the harder it is to justify adding anything new as opposed to spending our time making what we have as polished and fun as possible. There is a point where many things just go onto a list for 'the next game.' So nobody forces us into keeping with our technology or ceasing the addition of new features, but there comes a point in development where we need to stop adding and instead maintain as solid a system as possible to ensure the game gets done to the high degree of quality that we (and you) expect.

10-08-2011 09:50 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...8003#post18003

We are not exclusive to any digital platform. Working hard to be available on Origins, Amazon, Steam and Impulse. Unfortunately it's not 100% our call on this one. And certainly not exclusive to anyone on the physical copy either. Still working on details, when it's 100% nailed down you'll be the 2nd group to know!

10-18-2011, 01:24 PM
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/other...ml#post2169144

Which question? Was it Origins Exclusive? It won't be exclusive, we are working to have it available on all the digital platforms, Steam, origins and Impulse as well as some others.
Unfortunately it's not 100% our call but EA has been great about working with us to make this happen.

10-18-2011, 01:34 PM
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/other...ml#post2169156

Unfortunately when someone like EA looks at a game like this they believe PC sales are a miniscule item in the overall picture.
We believe given the dedication to making the PC version feel 'built for the platform' that we are going to change that a bit.
But to answer your question no, we won't be Origins only.

10-21-2011 11:14 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...0078#post20078

I can assure you that when we launch this game, it will be fully mature, and playable. We cannot fall into the trap this industry has repeatedly fallen into of releasing games and then patching them up to done/fun. Working our butts off to get the bug count to zero, which I am told is literally impossible! But we are. The day 1 game will be the game, up until the first DLC, which we hope is way beyond incredible in its own right.

11-06-2011 01:25 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...2030#post22030

This was a misunderstanding (and we do apologize for any confusion it caused). Todd thought the interviewer was asking about a sequel, thus the multiple disc answer. Reckoning will on one disc.

12-03-2011 11:41 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...6426#post26426

Well I would tell you the goal IS, was and always will be to ship with ZERO bugs. Being new to this industry I realize what an insane challenge that is.
That being said this is our very first product, our very first chance to prove to you, our players, that exactly like Blizzard when you see 38 Studios on the box you might LOVE the genre of game, you might not, but you will never question the quality of the experience. You only get one chance at that, and that's with your first game.
We spent thousand and thousands of man hours fixing bugs and polishing this game that we didn't think we were going to get early on.

12-03-2011 11:51 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...6431#post26431

Our ultimate goal will be to release our full tool set to our players to allow them to mod our games, any game, as much as they'd like. That community is amazing at extending the life of games and we want that same sort of interest in games we make.

12-03-2011 12:48 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...6459#post26459

We are working to be available on every digital platform we can be, including STEAM. Given we are new, our IP is new, we need to be available in as many ways as possible for people to see how incredible the game is.

12-03-2011 08:20 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...6593#post26593

Right, it's a goal. The goal is to release whatever we can to assist the players out there to be able to go to town with mods. No idea when, what or how but once the team gets DLC plans executed and gets some time to get their lives back we'd love to be able to assist the mod community in growing with Reckoning.

12-07-2011 05:19 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...Reckoning+Team

How will save files be handled? We know Reckoning will use the traditional game save system with checkpoints, but will each character get a separate file/folder for their saves (Like Mass Effect), or will it be a single file/folder that all saves will be stored in (Like TES)?

Reckoning keeps your save files together in one "folder", but when you are selecting which one to load you will see the level and name of your character, and where the save was made. So, it is very easy to know what you're about to load…and make sure it's the right one! Also, if you're playing Reckoning on PC, you can make separate profiles, and organize your saves by profile.

12-09-2011, 10:23 PM
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/other...ml#post2222468

If you really are having issues deciding on platform I will state this again. This will be the first game I've ever played on my PC with a console controller. I've never even CONSIDERED it before, and couldn't imagine not going this route for Reckoning.

If I were a console gamer I might feel different. But ya, I am going PC with a controller.

If you don't want to use the controller I can assure you the port was not 'lazy', I clearly ASKED for a serious commitment to the PC version and I think Ian and the gang did some awesome work.

One of the nice things is the instant switch the PC version has, touch a keypad on a controller, UI shifts to that, touch the keyboard? Immediate UI change to PC interface.

12-12-2011 10:44 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...8991#post28991

Hi all!

We've spent a lot of time nurturing this game for every platform it is being released on. We feed and water it, expose it to sunlight, even sing to it if needed. And when all else fails we roll up our sleeves and write some code.

Each platform has its own unique technical strengths and weaknesses. Our goal while coding Reckoning has been to play up the strengths and play down the weaknesses of each to the point that you have the expected, optimal experience on each platform. We've logged thousands of QA hours on all platforms, and are pleased with what they have to say...

I preordered my own Special Edition of this game (Amalur dice are just plain cool)...on the PS3. Hopefully that will help allay any worries that you may have. In fact, around the office everyone seems to have their own platform of choice to play the game on, evenly divided amongst all 3.

Hope that helps,
Tag
BHG Coder, far too infrequent forum poster

12-12-2011 12:27 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...9014#post29014

So one simplified theoretical example: Let's pretend system A has a lower performing graphics device than system B, but more CPU power. This could lead to a situation where on system B we spend less CPU processing determining what to show on screen, because the video card can handle some of that for us. On system A we could use the CPUs to whittle down more of what should be displayed, thus handing less data off to the video card for display. Neither system is crippled or forced, and to you both scenes will look nearly the same (fast and pretty!). There is a large difference in what goes on technically under the hood to get the game looking and performing how you expect, but the difference to you as a user on the different platforms is subtle or negligible. This example can be applied to almost all the differing subsystems on the consoles, but I feel we achieved our end goal which is to have the game look and feel on both exactly how our designers and artists wanted it to be for you.

We wouldn't cripple a feature on one platform just because the other couldn't handle it, but that really isn't a scenario that came up all that often. We more worried about making sure everything ran fast, looked pretty and sounded great. Those three are often at odds with each other, but I think on all platforms you all will be pleased with the results (I am).

12-13-2011 01:23 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...9297#post29297

Falkon - The underlying rendering code is specific to each platform, but the base textures and shaders used for each platform are as visually similar as we could get them. Additionally all lighting and post-processing are tuned to be equally as close as possible. We needed the artists to be able to tweak their lighting/environment settings on one platform and know those changes would carry over to the others. Any other way would leave open the possibility of things falling through the cracks and having some areas be totally different on the other builds. Any differences you are seeing is likely attributable to the lighting and other settings for those particular shots. The art and cinematics crews spent a lot of time designing the lighting and camera shots to convey the mood and feel they were going for in each area or for each cinematic. All 3 platforms should render very close the each other in overall feel, so you won't see something more or less stylized than the same scene on another platform.

reilly - thanks! But I should note that forum titles convey little about dedication and effort... there are ~20 programmers and over 100 people who have devoted a large chunk of their lives to making this game as good as possible. they all deserve as deep a bow as one could give!

12-13-2011 02:14 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...9309#post29309

Honestly it's going to come down to the same thing that drives every other decision for us, time. The engine was built from the ground up, and in doing so there was not a major focus on the ability/inability to mod. It will be more about resources and time vs anything else, and then what the result would look like.
That's something Ian, Tag and the engineers will decide in the end.
Our desire would be to allow modders to extend Reckoning's life as long as possible, I am not smart enough to tell you right now what that means for us, and for the modding world at large.

12-21-2011 06:24 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...1937#post31937

There are really two reasons why the ability selector UI works as it does on the consoles, one technical reason and one design reason.

1.) On the consoles, having more than four abilities mapped for instant use at any given time would mean having to have all the memory loaded for every one of those abilities at all times. On the PC that's no big deal, but on the consoles, memory management is tricky to say the least. We could have sacrificed memory somewhere else (by having, say, less enemy variety in each area) to make that possible if need be, but we chose not to due to the other reason, which is more design-oriented: 4 abilities accessed instantly via the trigger menu simply worked better than the umpteen other approaches we tried over the course of development.

2.) We did a TON of user testing with all manner of different UIs and control schemes for accessing abilities during Reckoning's development, from lists to radials to multi-tiered menus (at one point we even had abilities arranged in a dpad menu much like the weapon menu for Half-Life 2 on console). We tried having UIs that pause the game and UIs that didn't, etc. D-pad, triggers, bumpers, you name it. In the end of the day, this approach proved to be the most effective at being A.) Easy to learn, B.) Easy to operate, C.) Not slowing down the pace of combat, and D.) Granting the player access to enough abilities at a moment's notice so that you can employ a nice mix of magic attacks in a single fight without having to pause the game and select a new spell to make active. In short, we went with this approach because we found in practice that it works extremely well.

That said, if you find you want access to more than 4 active abilities (and you don't want to play on PC), there are three factors that mitigate the issue:

1.) As I noted in an earlier post, our spells and weapon attacks include quite a bit of depth simply by virtue of how we handle contextual combos and player input in general. Storm Bolt and Tempest, for instance, collectively require only a single active ability to be slotted rather than being independent abilities that have to be slotted on their own. In short, two weapons and four abilities doesn't mean you've only got 6 total actions you can do in combat--you could easily have 20 things you could do with that toolkit if you've unlocked some special attacks and ability upgrades.

2.) Sustained abilities can be mapped, turned on, and then unmapped to free up a slot. It'll still use up its mana cost as long as it's on, but it won't take up one of your four mappable slots.

3.) Remapping abilities is pretty speedy. Press Start, select Abilities, select the ability you want and hit X (or square on the PS3). It's not something I ever find myself doing in active combat (I never need to), but if you wanted to for whatever reason, it's not a particularly time-intensive process.

01-06-2012 12:09 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...6371#post36371

Below are the minimum and recommended system requirements for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on the PC.


MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS:
Windows XP with Service Pack 3
Windows Vista with Service Pack 2
Windows 7 with Service Pack 1

CPU:
Intel Core2 Duo (or equivalent) running at 2.2GHz or greater
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (or equivalent) running at 2.6GHz or greater

RAM:
At least 1 GB for Windows XP
At least 2 GB for Windows Vista and Windows 7

Disc Drive:
CD/DVD ROM drive (required for installation only), 8x or faster CD/DVD drive

Hard Drive:
At least 10.5 GB of free space

Video Adapter:
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB or better
ATI Radeon HD3650 512MB or better
Supporting Pixel Shader 3.0
Minimum Resolution Supported is 1280x720

DirectX:
9.0c Compatible


RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS:
Windows XP with Service Pack 3
Windows Vista with Service Pack 2
Windows 7 with Service Pack 1

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Quad (or equivalent) running at 2.4GHz or greater
AMD Phenom X4 (or equivalent) running at 2.6GHz or greater

RAM:
At least 3 GB for Windows XP
At least 4 GB for Windows Vista and Windows 7

Disc Drive:
CD/DVD ROM drive (required for installation only), 8x or faster CD/DVD drive

Hard Drive:
At least 10.5 GB of free space

Video Adapter:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 1GB RAM or better
ATI Radeon HD4850 1GB RAM or better
Supporting Pixel Shader 3.0

DirectX:
9.0c Compatible

You will also need an internet connection for product activation/registration.

01-17-2012 04:22 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...1150#post41150

You can re-assign the keybindings to something you'd prefer in the full PC version of Reckoning. Also, it sounds as if the mouse sensitivity may have been a bit too high for your liking. You may want to try turning that down (I usually turn it down a little, too).

01-19-2012 06:46 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...4465#post44465

Hi Winchester (hope you see this),

Yes, if you can play the demo on your system and it runs fine, you will have no problem running the full version of Reckoning.

01-19-2012 06:59 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...4491#post44491

Hi all,

The base PS3 install is approximately 3,700 MB.

01-23-2012 10:26 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...8598#post48598

The goal has been, and always will be, to deliver the best player experience on the platform of choice. If we are making something for the PC, it should be optimized as such, Ipad, Iphone, mobile anything, same imo.
Delivering on a platform to make money sucks, delivering on a platform because it's the best possible player experience = awesome.

01-24-2012 06:26 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...9324#post49324

I just double checked with the combat team here, and the secondary weapon attack is one of the very few things you cannot remap in the PC version of Reckoning.

01-25-2012 03:31 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...0127#post50127

Reckoning has an in-game achievement system that is the same regardless of what version you are playing. Where the difference comes in is where you can view the list of achievements. For the PC version, you can view it in-game (and on Steam). For the XBox 360 and PS3 versions, you'll be able to view your full achievements list on your PlayStation Network and/or XBox Live profiles.

01-25-2012 04:30 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...0195#post50195

To that end I imagine Jess being as awesome as she is, and the dev team being the same, there will be a place where you guys will be able to submit bugs and they will be addressed as they can be. It will be insanely helpful if you guys that do submit them submit your platform and ANY PC stuff you can.

But your jobs are to play the game and have fun, not submit bug reports, remember that. Just know that in doing so we are hearing you, always, our ability to act/react to bug submissions is not solely ours at the moment, but we want you guys to know we are ALWAYS listening, and whether we agree with your opinions or submissions is beside the point.

That you are spending your money, and as important your time, playing our games is huge for us. When players go the extra step to submit bugs it's usually, imo, because they care about the game and the dev, and that's cool.

01-25-2012 05:01 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...0239#post50239

I'm curious what types of things contributed to the total size of the data in Reckoning that took up so much disk space? In contrast Skyrim had 4.5 hours of music, plus about 10-12k more lines of dialog, and the world is potentially larger than Reckoning, yet it's resources were about 4.5 gigs of data smaller. This isn't a complaint, I'm just curious as a cat.

Hi Falkon! I assume you are basing this off the PC system requirements for hard drive space. I can't really speak to other products, but I suspect in general our overall size is similar to other titles within this genre. The bulk of our data is in fact audio, with over 560,000 words of spoken text a single language worth of audio takes up roughly 40% of our DVD footprint on consoles.

The install size discrepancy on PC is likely due to the fact that we can take advantage of the PC medium to install multiple languages simultaneously in some cases, which can quickly grow the install size into the 10GB range listed in our requirements (some single language PC installs will clock in far lower). To answer your general question of where our total size goes, we are fairly evenly divided (apart from audio) into region sets, terrain data, collision data, equipment art, UI, cinematics, dungeon/exterior sets, and texture data, with many slivers of other smaller data throughout.

01-26-2012 04:24 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...1235#post51235

Hi - I'm coming up to answer since I could use more info

1) Are you playing on PS3? The uncapped frame rate causes the camera to lurch on the PS3. This is fixed in the final build.

2) Is the camera sensitivity OK at the lowest setting? I would also recommend letting the auto follow handle the camera for you (don't touch the right stick). It does a good job in most cases.

3) For movement, do you want the run speed to be slower? You could try moving in stealth crouch and see if that works better for you.

Let me know!

01-28-2012 07:04 AM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...3575#post53575

Actually, the load times are a bit shorter in the final game than in the demo, whether or not you install to the hard drive--even without installing, our load times are still equal to or better than those in the average game of this type. That said, I still highly recommend installing to the hard drive if you have one, because it can further reduce your load times pretty significantly. And shorter load time equals more fun time.

The main reason I tend to get so uppity about it is that a ton of people don't know you CAN install games to the 360 hard drive to speed up load times, and that drives me crazy, since you can have a better experience if you do so. The ability to install has always been there, but it's not especially obvious to the user at a glance, unfortunately. Anyway, please pardon my hyperbole and crazy arm-waving--I just want folks to play the game in the best possible way they can.

01-29-2012, 12:56 AM
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthre...=#post34654779

Couple of things for you guys sold, or on the fence that have the demo.

We are adamant about making a living breathing world. If you finish up the 45 minutes and want to go back, and do care about details and stuff, do so.

When you do this time, if you can check out the boggarts, bears, bandits and other mobs, from afar. See if the animators and designers don't have an awesome sense of humor.

Boggarts chasing fireflies, bears fighting wolves, bears sleeping, so much life to this world outside of just your space.

Also, I think you can do it in the demo with the fire staff, but set a boggart on fire In the final build it is some of the funniest stuff you can see

With regards to the keyboard UI, you can remap keys in the final build, not in the demo afaik. But the PC UI was built with intent, not a straight port mindset.

You can not like what we did, but we tried to make the UI work on the KB and Mouse for this game, and this game alone. With the combat and flow of combat it was a challenge, but the team worked their butts off to make a KB and Mouse flow inside the combat system. I'm proud of the time and effort they gave it because we had a talk over a year ago about actually making a UI that worked on the PC instead of the traditional 'just port it over, the game was made for console approach'.

We didn't do that, we may have ended up with a solution you hate, and that's understandable, but I wanted you guys to know the intent was to make the game work as good as it possibly could on the platform you were playing on, rather than just porting a UI to a PC build from a console focused game.

01-29-2012 12:34 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...5082#post55082

I have limited tech IQ, but I can explain at a high level how they approached creating this game.

Apparently creating a console game for the console, PS3 and Xbox, is far harder on the PS3 than the Xbox or PC. Most folks create their games with the consoles driving dev, then they reach some inflection point and, if you are developing for both, two teams get after it with a 3rd PC team picking up left overs.

This team, in what I think was a very smart decision, designed around the difficulty that is the PS3, and got that to a place where the team liked it, and then had some of the incredibly smart XBox folks adjust the game to excel on the XBox. The PC version had it's own little gang that was working all the time, trying to keep the look and feel as best they could for a PC product.

Apparently, and I learned this a few years ago, to pass cert on these consoles you must create a game with min console specs, meaning NO HD!! That means the game has to fit on a single disc.

You can see where that can be troublesome I bet, I'm only just learning this over the past few years.

Pretty amazing stuff, and it's another area where when 5 years ago I said "I want to create a game company", I had NO IDEA it was going to be anything close to what it has become.

01-29-2012, 07:26 PM
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorp...ml#post2270399

We tried to make the PC players SEE our effort in making the game a good experience on that platform. Not just a standard cut and paste UI.

They did work their asses of in making the PC version, whether you agree or like it or not is another story, but the effort was there and I am sure we'll learn quite a bit more about what we did wrong than what we did right after it launches, and hopefully be able to make those changes for Reckoning 2.

02-01-2012 07:10 PM
http://forums.reckoning.amalur.com/s...0523#post60523

Some people here and in other forums were wondering if it was possible to adjust LOD settings on the PC, so I went ahead and dug up the answer:

The short answer is no.

We bake the LOD information into the data of the game, and it's not something that can be adjusted on the fly at runtime (dynamically). From my non-technical understanding of it, we break the game world up in to cells, and use a render farm to identify all the visible meshes from each cell, and then also determine which LOD of the asset to use.

It's unfortunate. When I was emailing the programmers about this question, they were all frowny faces about it

But knowing what I know, I really can't fault them. The programming team worked their collective asses off to get the game optimized and running on all three platforms. These guys were literally living out of their offices and putting in well over 100 hour weeks. I think in hindsight, it could have been authored another way, but once we realized that LODs were locked in, it was too late. They all would have loved to have added a feature to switch LODs for you PC guys and gals, but the choice literally came down to fixing bugs versus adding this option. Believe me, these are really tough decisions to make (I call it "baby killing"). At the end of the day, I gotta agree with them.

All of us on the development team have features and options that we would have liked to add (babies), but each thing that gets changed requires tons of QA, and on a game THIS big, with as many ridiculous systems and enemies and ways to play, it's a 100% guarantee that each thing that gets added or changed will break something else. This is the biggest game any of us have ever worked on, and when you get your hands on it, you'll see what I mean. Personally speaking, I think there's 70% of the game that I've never even played yet. With a game this size, there's bound to be things that we could have done better.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't come across as too much excuse-making. Like I said, it's unfortunate, and it's not an oversight we intend to make again.

02-02-2012, 10:57 PM
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthre...=#post34797172

To be honest I haven't seen the PC 'problems', doesn't mean they aren't there, but I am going PC with an Xbox controller if it matters.
In the final build I am not seeing the issues, maybe I am just not noticing.
I know the camera hasn't bothered me in the final build but maybe that's a like/dislike thing rather than a feature?
I also haven't seen or felt the LOD issues, but I am going to play this weekend and look for them.

02-04-2012, 01:46 PM
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthre...=#post34811041

just to set this fact straight: the resolution is the same on 360 and ps3

02-03-2012, 02:00 PM
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthre...=#post34811393

Not completely sure about the demo - but it doesn't make sense why it would be any different. I just did a side by side comparison with the final game at 1080 (game's native on consoles is 720). The aliasing is a little different due to just how the PS3 and Xbox scalars work differently, so it seems the PS3 ends up with more noticeable jaggies and the 360 is a bit softer on the edges.