RPS Demands for PC Games

[Chris Nahr]

It's the week of indisputably correct lists! Hot on the heels of Soren Johnson's strategy games list, Rock Paper Shotgun posts ten things that all PC games should do. Now please start arguing about whether having a "My Games" folder in "My Documents" is horrible or not.

[Equis]

I prefer all my save games to be under the folder in which the game main files are.

It would be nice if all games allowed you to specify your own folder for all user-created files. That way, I can store my saved games and my mods in one handy folder and save it elsewere if I ever want to install the game years from now.

I fully support seperate quicksave and quickload keys though. It should be mandatory by now.

[roguefrog]

Can't remember a game that didn't support Alt-Tab.

Ability to skip all Company Logos/Cutscenes/Etc at boot is also a must. Even better with an option to turn that shit off.

[beloved one]

Saved games should go in appdata because of user privileges. Some people put it in my documents because it has the same privilege situation as appdata, but it isn't a document and doesn't belong there.

Why not just in program files? Because modern os's have multiple users. Takes admin to write to program files, and so if you actually have a login, your game won't be able to save while you are playing it, unless you do the run as admin thing. People wonder why vista security is a pain for some games, and refusing to use appdata or mydocs is why.

Different users of the comp _should_ have different quicksaves and config files, but w/e. That # of the list is rather naive.

[Kareem]

A lot of Source engine games like HL2 and its episodes had flimsy alt-tab support that would often crash the game.

[Hans Lauring]

I like that save anywhere isn't on the list. It's written so it's a given.

Good list.

[KieronGillen]

Originally Posted by roguefrog

Can't remember a game that didn't support Alt-Tab.

You need to play more games, man. It's the bane of my fucking life due to all the nonsense I have to play. And the ones which do it unreliably are even worse, in many ways.

Originally Posted by Hanzii

I like that save anywhere isn't on the list. It's written so it's a given.

Alec tried to make it as PC-specific as possible rather than doing general good rules, coz we are PC geeks.

KG

[Hans Lauring]

Originally Posted by KieronGillen

You need to play more games, man.



Alec tried to make it as PC-specific as possible rather than doing general good rules, coz we are PC geeks.

KG

But the way he writes (twice) about quicload/quicksave implies that save anywhere is a given for pc games, which I agree with... even if he didn't mean it that way.
He can agree with me instead, then.

[KieronGillen]

Let us assume idea congress.

Re: Quickload, when I was towards the end of my stay at PCG (i.e. Burnt out and cynical) I used to ask almost every developer what they're hotkeys for quicksave and quickload were. If they were by each other, I just mentally wrote off their game. If they can't get something that simple right, what are the chances of them doing something actually hard?

KG

[Chris Nahr]

Regarding saves, another pet-peeve of mine is that I shouldn't have to save. I'm just playing two PC games where the autosave is nonexistent (Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI) or worthless (Mass Effect) -- in the latter case because the game only saves at area transitions, and you can easily spend an hour in a single area. Game freezes? Congratulations, you just lost an hour of gameplay!

Save automatically, to multiple slots and at timed intervals, people. Not just every once in a blue moon when it's convenient for the engine to do so. And if creating an entire save is too slow then do incremental saves. Desktop applications have known how to do this for ten years or more.

[Igor Muravyev]

Patches should definitely not break save games.. I think it's very lazy for developers to release patches that would do something like that. If their game was so bugged that it invalidates save games, then maybe they should've done more testing before releasing it.

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by Igor Muravyev

Patches should definitely not break save games.. I think it's very lazy for developers to release patches that would do something like that. If their game was so bugged that it invalidates save games, then maybe they should've done more testing before releasing it.

Or write a little savegame conversion tool that runs when you install the patch.

[jellyfish]

Originally Posted by Equis

It would be nice if all games allowed you to specify your own folder for all user-created files.

Kings Bounty lets you specify whether to store save games in my documents or in the install directory.

[Coca Cola Zero]

I agree with all of these items except 3.

With games anywhere near the cutting edge I think you're better off giving the user a fullscreen resolution that's likely to give them good performance (based on profiling their hardware) than you are giving them a resolution that matches their display exactly. If you're planning for the user who is too unsavvy to change anything he's better off with a game that's a bit blurry due to upscaling rather than a game that runs at 3 FPS because his monitor's resolution is far higher than a game like Crysis or whatever could hope to display given his CPU/GPU/RAM.

Obviously if their desktop resolution falls within playable range, that is the ideal selection in that case and if possible you should try to give them at least the same aspect ratio as their desktop resolution, but I think playable performance should trump avoiding display scaling.

[mono]

Great list. I wouldn't mind the Widescreen Support bullet point to include proper Field Of View. Some games just zoom in on the FoV to accomodate widescreens, it's the gaming equivalent of getting stuck w/ a full screen DVD. Yuck.

[Zylon]

Yeah, it seems like that list was compiled by people with lousy LCD scalers.

Also, I like how they insist that the Esc key should have ONE AND ONLY ONE purpose (pause/menu), then immediately and with no hint of irony whatsoever demand an exception to the rule-- it should also skip cutscenes. To paraphrase this very list entry, no-one wants to be miserably jabbing at random buttons one-by-one because the phone’s ringing but they’ve got no idea what pauses a cutscene.

[Fugitive]

Originally Posted by Zylon

Also, I like how they insist that the Esc key should have ONE AND ONLY ONE purpose (pause/menu), then immediately and with no hint of irony whatsoever demand an exception to the rule-- it should also skip cutscenes. To paraphrase this very list entry, no-one wants to be miserably jabbing at random buttons one-by-one because the phone’s ringing but they’ve got no idea what pauses a cutscene.

Well, the solution to that is obvious: ESC should bring up a pause menu in the cutscene, with the option to skip it. That way you can always pause a cutscene without inadvertently skipping it.

[Tim James]

RPS seems to be very demanding.

[KieronGillen]

Yet loving.

KG

[zengonzo]

What games allow cutscene pausing? (Apart from console's autopause on menu.)

I'm not challenging this, I really don't know. I always feel like I get one shot at a cutscene, and if anything interrupts it I'm fucked unless it has a cinema option.

[mono]

It's all a blur, but I seem to recall some games that let you hit Esc to enter the Options menu during cut scenes, while a mouse click or the space bar skips the movie. I don't mind it that much because in-engine cut scenes are often a good spot to tweak your visual settings.

[red guy]

Originally Posted by mono

It's all a blur, but I seem to recall some games that let you hit Esc to enter the Options menu during cut scenes, while a mouse click or the space bar skips the movie.

Ahhhh, NOLF. They even explained the use of the space bar in the in-game tutorial, and added a "skip the intro movies" checkbox to the game launcher.

[Zylon]

Originally Posted by Fugitive

Well, the solution to that is obvious: ESC should bring up a pause menu in the cutscene, with the option to skip it. That way you can always pause a cutscene without inadvertently skipping it.

Ideally, Esc would behave exactly the same during cutscenes as it does any other time. I think UI design and technology has come far enough that it's not unreasonable to expect across-the-board consistency. Hell, if the game supports quicksaves, you should be able to do it right in the middle of a cutscene.

[cliffski]

Originally Posted by Zylon

Ideally, Esc would behave exactly the same during cutscenes as it does any other time.

ideally game designers wouldn't waste effort and money on cutscenes.

[Troy S Goodfellow]

You had me at "Alt-Tab" support.

Troy

[Rorschach]

It's a reasonable and practical list of things that developers can mostly control. Good job RPS crew!

[Zylon]

Originally Posted by cliffski

ideally game designers wouldn't waste effort and money on cutscenes.

Thief: The Dark Project says "Fuck off".

[unbongwah]

I would add "remappable controls" in there somewhere (or is that too generic?); and maybe replace 2 with "let me choose where to install the game and where to save games."

[scotthal]

Originally Posted by beloved one

Saved games should go in appdata because of user privileges. Some people put it in my documents because it has the same privilege situation as appdata, but it isn't a document and doesn't belong there.

Appdata is hidden in the UI. Users aren't supposed to know it's there. They will never, ever back anything in Appdata up. Appdata is for easily recreatable configuration information, not priceless saved games that represent thousands of hours of blood, sweat and tears.

I agree that saved games aren't documents, but they're far more like documents than they are like configuration information. They belong in Documents where they can be found, indexed, and backed up easily.

[steve]

1. Alt-tab support.

Agreed. In general, PC developers need to better understand how people use their computers now, with multiple apps running all the time, multiple interruptions, blah blah blah. Make sure you have the option to run in a window and when the window loses focus, auto-pause.

2. Use standardised install and savegame folders

Great idea! Now what's the standard? I've already seen multiple ones here. Microsoft isn't particularly helpful here---lord knows even they can't be consistent---so I'm not sure how developers are supposed to unite to figure this one out.

Also, if you store your saved games off My Documents or User/Docs, why do people need to know where the subfolder under Program Files is? (And if you're using Vista, why aren't you using its superior Start Menu search?) Finally, publishers typically mandate (and put into contracts) the hierarchy for Start Menus and Folder locations.

3. Automatically set themselves to your desktop screen resolution

Maybe for the front-end, but for in-game stuff? Tell that to the people running a 17-inch, 1920x1200 laptop with a low-end videocard.

4. Support widescreen resolutions.

Sure. Though if you look at Valve's stats, there are surprisingly small numbers of widescreen users.

5. Uninstall in seconds.

Sure, though this hardly seems manley-festo worthy.

6. Don’t require the CD/DVD in the drive to play.

Agreed. Now quit bitching about "phoning home."

7. Keep the quicksave and quickload keys far apart.

Yeah, this is a lack of thought for UI/key mapping, isn't it? Someone did it, and everyone did it like that person instead of thinking, "Hmm, should we do this?" But gamers are often at fault here. They expect you to replicate the UI and key mappings of other games, even when they're bad ideas.

8. Escape means menu/pause

I understand this was a fight on Supreme Commander, but the "Esc" people lost because... well, blame Blizzard, since both StarCraft and WarCraft III use "F10" for "Bring Up Menu."

9. Auto-backup quicksaves

Sure, assuming the files are small. We wouldn't want to hear complaints about it taking too long to save games.

10. Patches should fix, not break

Duh? This is kind of like, "journalists, never write an article that contains factual errors or typos." Shit happens, man.

Here's the biggest PC gaming issue that isn't addressed in this piece: PC developers need to think of laptops first, not desktops.