Gaming - Page 1038

Fallout 4's new Far Harbor DLC is causing major frame rate drops on PS4 thanks to dense environment lighting effects, and PS4 owners aren't happy.

Fallout 4's new $25 DLC Far Harbor is putting a lot of console owners through hell. The DLC's intense volumetric fog and atmospheric lighting effects are the main source of the FPS drops, and PS4 owners have taken to Reddit to share their woes. Bethesda promised that Fallout 4 would hit 30 FPS on consoles, but PS4 owners are swearing that the fog triggers massive frame rate drops that "feel like 10-15 FPS", pretty much making the game feel quite torturous.

Far Harbor's fog isn't a cakewalk for PC, either. The fog can drop my frame rates down from smooth 60 FPS to ~41 FPS at 1080p Ultra with a Radeon R9 390. At 1440p, I hit about ~30FPS while in the fog.

Fallout 4's new Far Harbor DLC pretty much requires the use of Nick Valentine, the game's synth companion. But what happens if you can't find Nick? Before you start scouring the Wasteland looking for the gumshoe schweetheart, try these easy steps. NOTE: these steps are for PC players, as console players will still have to manually look around.

I was one of the many players who lost Nick Valentine. I did all the steps I'm about to show you, but they didn't work. Then I tried something different, and lo and behold, the synth was back in my digital life. It turns out at some point I had accidentally deleted Nick using the console commands, putting me in a pretty hairy situation. Thankfully it's an easy fix!

The first thing you want to do is pop up the console by pressing tilde (~) and then enter the following commands:

Homefront: The Revolution launched this week to reports of performance issues on all platforms (although PC is said to suffer the least). Developer Dambuster Studios has acknowledged as such on its forums and noted patches to address the situation are forthcoming.

"Performance - particularly frame rate - is not currently where we want it to be, and we are working on additional patches to help address these issues and more," they write. "Patch notes per platform will be available on the community forums and on Steam when they go live."

Easing the sting some is the release of some free DLC today (new outfits and boosters), with some Resistance Mode mission DLC coming down the pipe next month, and even more over the next year or so.

Support for the much-celebrated Vulkan API is on its way to DOTA 2, according to AMD software developer Fletcher Dunn. You shouldn't have to wait long either: he says it will arrive "probably sometime next week." Hopefully, Dunn doesn't mean next week in Valve Time.

Don't know about Vulkan? It's a low-level programming API that effectively replaces OpenGL and Mantle, and allows programmers to squeeze quite a lot of extra performance out of their games, resulting in smoother gameplay for you. So there's that to look forward to. Unlike Mantle and DirectX 12, Vulkan is cross-platform, so it can be used industry-wide.

We should have an article up when the update goes live, so keep an eye out.

Until the recent rise of low-level programming APIs Mantle, DirectX 12, and Vulkan, visual and performance advancements and innovations in the gaming space were slow and scarce. Now, says Crytek technical director Rok Erjavec, it's a whole new ballgame again.

"I have no doubt we will see a lot more novel approaches and deviations from established rendering pipelines [as a result of DirectX 12], something that has already been happening to an extent," he explains in an interview with DSOGaming.

"There's a wealth of academic research that was ill-suited to practical application through a combination of hardware and software abstraction limitations. With the latter getting out of the way, and hardware flexibility continually improving - more than things just getting iteratively "prettier" - we're looking at a rise in experimentation again. In a way, the industry has circled back to a place similar to where we were in the early-mid 90s, when software rasterization didn't really impose any restraints on creativity beyond the 17ms barrier."

The Xbox One isn't useful for much, as it's only capable of playing games at resolutions we used to play at back in the 90s, but hey - you can install Windows 95 to your Xbox One now.

YouTuber 'vcfan' had 'Dosbox', a virtual DOS machine app running on his Xbox, where you can run Windows 95 and other software. Not everyone can do this, as you'll need an Xbox One developer unit, but Microsoft is allowing the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) later this year, where more fun might begin.

Wake me up when I can install Windows 10 on an Xbox One, and I be excited - would you want to install a desktop OS with a working mouse and keyboard as a media machine, or something similar?

Creative Assembly, the developers behind Total War: WARHAMMER, have released more details on the PC side of the game. The team says that WARHAMMER has been optimized to better utilize all of the CPU cores in your PC, where the game won't lose performance on single-threaded limitations or problems.

In a new post that Creative Assembly wrote, they said: "Total War has traditionally been quite CPU-bound, with the game-draw and graphics render processes both running on the same CPU thread. Over time, as the engine has evolved and become more demanding, this has become an increasingly important bottleneck for us. During the course of TWWH's development, we've spent time separating these so they now run independently on their own threads. We've also optimized our task-system to have better multi-threading performance across the board".

The team has spend time on the particle simulation pipeline, from the pixel shader to the compute shader, making better use of the GPUs time. The team added: "In fact we've done this with several parts of the rendering pipeline, further utilizing the GPU and letting the CPU focus on everything else it has to do". Thanks to these changes that CA made to Total War: WARHAMMER, the game will make great use of multi-core CPUs. CA elaborated: "Long story short: all of this means we're using the CPU and the GPU more efficiently. TW: Warhammer takes better advantage of multi-core CPUs, balancing the load across the cores so that no single core is maxed out and limiting framerates while others sit idle".

Destiny's new expansion will be called Rise of Iron, and it'll feature a dedicated raid activity along with expansive content.

A promo pic for Destiny's new Rise of Iron DLC was leaked onto Reddit just hours ago, and sources confirmed to Kotaku that the promotional image is indeed genuine. The outlet reports that Rise of Iron will have its own raid activity that's "loosely based" on the scrapped House of Wolves raid, and the expansion will be bigger than The Dark Below and House of Wolves--but likely not as big as The Taken King.

Rise of Iron shows the Iron Banner's Lord Saladin brandishing a fearsome fiery axe, and the expansion will obviously be based on the game's legendary nine Lords of Iron Titans. We could even see old Ironlords like Timur, Felwinter, Perun and Radegast appear once again in some form.

Battlefield 1 surprised most people, with its throwback to the World War 1 days, but we're only finding out now that the original pitch by DICE for the WW1 theme was 'totally rejected' by EA.

EA's Executive VP Patrick Söderland didn't think the WW1 theme would appeal to players, saying that a game focused on trench war couldn't "be fun to play". During EA's recent Investors Day, Söderland said: "It wasn't the most obvious choice. When the team presented to me the idea of World War 1 I absolutely rejected it. I said 'World War 1 is a trench war, it can't be fun to play".

Söderland added: "The team continued and persisted in the fact that this can be fun, and showed up with a very short demo that convinced me at least that this was the right path. The good news is whenever you take creative risks and it works, you actually can get to substantial success". He continued, finishing off with: "I think that the World War 1 theme is resonating with players out there, I think we have done something that will be right for the franchise and right for EA [but] we have to remember that so far we've only shown one trailer, and yes it's gotten a lot of success, but what's important is now we have to go back and make sure we deliver on the full promise of what Battlefield can be - and that we will do".

Take-Two teases that Rockstar is working on some "exciting future projects" which will be revealed soon, likely teasing Red Dead Redemption 2 and maybe GTA 6.

We already know Rockstar won't release Red Dead Redemption 2 until after April 2017 (FY2018), but the game will almost certainly be revealed at E3 2016--and possibly GTA 6 too. "Looking ahead, we expect to grow Non-GAAP revenues and earnings in fiscal 2018, based on our robust development plan that extends well beyond the current fiscal year. Rockstar Games is of course hard at work on some exciting future projects that will be revealed soon," Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said during the company's recent FY16 press release.

Zelnick further hinted at that the publisher has major AAA titles in its pipeline which will bolster FY2018 earnings significantly--what would boost sales higher than GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2? "You mentioned you expect growth on revenue and earnings for FY18, so what gives you the confidence to say that now?" an analyst asked during the call's Q&A session. "It's what we're working on in our development studios," said CEO Strauss Zelnick. "We have very good visibility into our pipeline, and based on what we see, it gives us high confidence for FY18 growth," Take-Two President Karl Slatoff added.

Neither Red Dead Redemption 2 or Grand Theft Auto 6 will release during Take-Two's Fiscal Year 2017, so don't expect any major sequels before April 2017. A 2017 release folds neatly in with the game's recent leaks.

Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive won't sneak in any major releases outside of its already-revealed FY2017 lineup, meaning Red Dead Redemption 2 won't launch until after the next fiscal year ends in April 2017.

"We've announced our entire release schedule for the year, and that's what you should expect our release schedule to be. Any changes would be performance based," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said during the company's most recent fiscal earnings call.

Soon Windows 10 PC gamers will be able to make and edit Halo 5 Forge maps with the precision offered by mouse and keyboards.

Both Microsoft and 343 Industries have announced that Halo 5's Forge mode is coming to Windows 10 PCs as a free app, allowing gamers to build maps on PC and deploy them to Xbox One. Halo 5: Guardians is still Xbox One exclusive, however.

"Forge on the PC will finally give the mouse/keyboard editing precision the community has always been clamoring for. On top of that, an updated and optimized UI geared towards mouse interactions makes a lot of the inputs in Forge easier/faster than before," said 343i's Tom French.

Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City are being remastered for an all-inclusive package Warner Bros. calls Batman: Return to Arkham. Both games will utilize Unreal Engine 4 as opposed to Unreal Engine 3 they were originally built on and will feature improved models, environments, lighting, effects, and shaders.

The collection is being worked on by Virtuos, the team behind the recently released and well-done Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster as well as Fable Anniversary, so it's in good hands.

Return is exclusive to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which isn't surprising given the engine upgrade offers no definitive graphical improvement over the PC versions of the game, judging from the trailer. The Arkham Knight fiasco probably doesn't help, either.

Microsoft is reportedly preparing for new hardware to be unveiled during E3 2016 next month, as well as a "new standard controller that ships with the Xbox One", reports Thurrott.

The new standard controller will have a similar physical look to the current design, but it will arrive in a new color. Microsoft currently ships a black controller with the Xbox One, but will reportedly change it up with a mid-cycle refresh to help sagging sales. The big news here is that Microsoft is wanting to continue its work on interactions between the Xbox One and PC thanks to Windows 10, where the company wants to make Windows 10 on the desktop and Xbox One a "killer combination". The company is hoping to really squeeze the ecosystem to create completely unique experiences for games, that happen to be on other platforms.

But the even bigger news is that Microsoft has "something else up its sleeve", but it's a "much bigger deal" than the new controller reports Thurrott. I'm expecting for the company to pounce down hard at E3 2016 and announce a new Xbox with a VR headset, working directly with AMD and this is what AMD also has up its sleeve. The PS4K and PSVR are going to seriously chomp into Microsoft's sales, and the news of Nintendo leveraging a Pascal-based Tegra processor from NVIDIA for their Nintendo NX console is super exciting - but right now, what does Microsoft have to fight it? Nothing... and that's why a huge next-gen reveal at E3 2016 makes perfect sense.

Did you know eSports is just a "promotional tool"... yeah, neither did I. According to Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two, eSports isn't a profitable standalone business just yet, as he believes in physical goods continuing to be profitable into the future.

Zelnick isn't convinced about eSports just yet, saying: "eSports we find very interesting. It is, however, still more a promotional tool than anything else. And most people see eSports as an opportunity to increase consumer engagement in their titles, and depending on the title, to increase consumer spending within the title".

It's not like Take-Two hasn't been involved with eSports, as they held an NBA 2K tournament with 92,000 teams competing for a huge $250,000 prize. The final 16 teams will compete in a single-elimination tournament over the weekend, with the finals taking place during the NBA Finals next month. Zelnick talked about the tournament, adding: "It's just the beginning for us. It's very gratifying so far, but we have yet to see it as a stand-alone profitable business. We see it more as an adjunct to consumer engagement in our titles".

Two weeks ago it was Battlefield 4's Dragon's Teeth DLC and Battlefield Hardline's Robbery DLC that were free on Origin. Now, you can grab Battlefield 4's Final Stand DLC for the low, low price of zero dollars.

Final Stand originally launched toward the end of 2014 and was the game's last major DLC. It features four large, distinct maps, a hovercraft, a futuristic Rorsch X1 rifle, and more, and while it doesn't rank among the best DLC the game has to offer, it's not the worst either.

Hit the source or boot Origin to grab it. As always, do it quick as the offer will expire soon.

Why was the new Star Wars: Battlefront game released half-finished without a campaign? So it could leech from the insane hype generated from The Force Awakens, of course!

After watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the theater, I wanted to continue my experience with a game. Publishers know this; that's why they've always served us with countless direct movie tie-in games, for better or worse. The new Battlefront game was yet another offering in this long tradition, and EA finally admits why the game shipped half-finished without a campaign.

"We made this choice due to time and being able to launch the game side-by-side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact," EA Studios' head Patrick Soderlund said at the company's Investor's Day meeting. Ah, so that's the trade-off: either ship a fully-finished game and miss the huge sales generated by the Star Wars frenzy, or ship it early and half-finished and take the hit in credibility but rake in tons of cash.

By 2020, EA's DLC and season pass content will more than double, with physical disc-based games shrinking by half.

Based on EA's new Investor's Day slides, the company is making a big push to "leveraging digital to drive growth and profitability", meaning digital game downloads and DLC/season pass content will be a major focus for the company moving onward.

In about four years time, EA's physical games will be far overshadowed by full digital game downloads, and "extra" content like DLC, season passes and microtransactions will rise dramatically. EA's most lucrative "extra content" is FIFA Ultimate Team, which is expected to only increase in value. Subscriptions will hike up a bit, bolstering services like EA Access/Origin Access and "live services" like Star Wars: The Old Republic, with mobile pushing up some too.

Introducing Ludens, the official mascot for Hideo Kojima's new Kojima Productions studio.

Hideo Kojima recently unveiled Ludens, the official icon for his newly resurrected games development studio Kojima Productions. Now that KojimaPro is free of Konami, it's important they establish an iconic symbol to rally behind. Ludens--which is Latin for "game"--is a rather striking and interesting figure, and could deliver some key details on Kojima's new "big and extremely edgy" timed PS4 exclusive.

Ludens wears what looks like an astronaut suit, which is actually called an "Extra-Vehicular Activity Creative Suit," topped with his distinctive futuristic knight helm that ensconces his trademark skull. Kojima teased a while back that Ludens holds an important secret for the upcoming game, which will actually be a trans-media experience told across video games and possibly anime. Ludens represents Kojima Pro's future: "We'll deliver THE NEW PLAY in THE NEW FUTURE with the cutting-edge equipment, technology, & the frontier spirit," Kojima said in a Tweet.

BioWare's new mysterious IP may be action-based instead of an RPG, fitting neatly into EA's new action-oriented focus.

A new slide from EA's Investor's Day presentation may hint that BioWare's new unannounced IP is rooted in the action genre.

The slide examines the genres of today's current games, with EA affirming its commitment to the action genre. BioWare is listed under the action genre, which is curious considering Mass Effect: Andromeda is an RPG game. Now this all depends on how EA defines ME: Andromeda and whether or not they see it as an "action RPG" or just an "RPG". If it's the latter, then BioWare's brand new IP could be set in the action genre.