IGN interviews Rockstar about tech. problems

[un om bun]

They're working on improving the editor and the f-in bowling game You can stop expecting anything serious from these dicks. They obviously have no intention or capability to improve on the real issues. It's up to the fans AGAIN to fix a broken console port. Yay !

[Splattel]

Oh, so the missing textures are caused by either old drivers, crappy computers or unsupported cards, eh? Rockstar, please explain how the hell I managed to get missing textures on a c2d with 4 gb ram and an 8800GT with the 178 drivers? It's not like those drivers were ancient or anything... What the hell kinda game craps itself up so bad from installed drivers which were working flawlessly with every other game I've tried? The missing textures-thingy is hardly a user-end fault...

[ObsessedWithGTA4]

My game is running fine. Other then low fps, about 30-35 and drops to 15-20 and sometimes pop in textures I really can't complain. The low fps is my processor E6600 @ 3.2. We know the game is a CPU hog rather then GPU hog. So I sold my PS3 (bought for GTA only) and bought a quad core processor since the game is multithreaded, 8 gigs ram, GTX 260 216, and a BD rom.

 

 

As mentioned in the interview. R* is going to stand behind their product. "This isn't a one shot deal". I am sure we will be getting regular updates over the next few months and then maybe 8-12 months from now a expansion pack.

 

 

For those of you with problems, just hold it out for a few days I am sure this will be resolved.

 

 

 

 

E6600 3.2

9800GTX+

4 gigs ram

[Madjoki]

 

Oh, so the missing textures are caused by either old drivers, crappy computers or unsupported cards, eh? Rockstar, please explain how the hell I managed to get missing textures on a c2d with 4 gb ram and an 8800GT with the 178 drivers? It's not like those drivers were ancient or anything... What the hell kinda game craps itself up so bad from installed drivers which were working flawlessly with every other game I've tried? The missing textures-thingy is hardly a user-end fault...

180.x is recommended for GTA4. Older drivers have always had problems with new games due to bugs in them (drivers, not games). IE. they handle some commands from DirectX incorrectly in some cases.

 

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_gtaiv_downloads.html

 

GTA3 had same kind of problems. Ie. Game was unplayable (during fog) with ATI grapchis card until hotfix/new drivers was released.

 

 

[siapnar]

Or you can get away from monitor for 2 meters and picture will get smooth!

AA solution found !

Even better to play it from the backyard with a wireless controller through a misty window.

LOL

[Vercetti Gangsta]

Kevin Whor... I cant allow myself to finish it. But yeah, he deserves it.

 

Completely agree with OP. Why all of those lies from Rockstar? Just be honest for gods sake... It's like they tried to make things worse by doing that disgrace of an interview.

[TruXter]

I just posted a thread on the same interview, glad I'm not the only one outraged by those comments.

 

Oh and TruXter, I built my PC from scratch, I know my way around a PC, my rig has also been left un-clocked, didn't need it, so this is not a case of noobs with "all the gear no idea" tweaking their PC's to oblivion.

Wanna bet?

your board a "striker extreme" is ddr2

and your video card is what ?????

 

ddr3

 

processor is 1066MHz fsb

 

your board is 1333/1066/800MHz

 

unless you settled for the mid level ram

meet bottle neck #2

 

 

"Memory Standard   DDR2 800"

but I doubt you read that much on it

 

Yes, I understand that my RAM is slower than my FSB, I knew that when I bought it, it was what I could afford at the time, BUT, it doesn't mean my PC will choke to such a point that it won't be able to run this game at speed. Even with your so called "bottle-neck" it should _still_ be perfectly capable of running this game fast. My PC has no issues whatsoever running Crysis / Crysis Warhead which pisses all over this game graphically.

 

Oh, and for your information, I'm switching to Vista 64 Ultimate on Monday when it arrives, along with 8GB of 1066Mhz RAM.

 

And I do read up on this stuff, so don't even try and judge what I know and don't know.

Try hell. it took six seconds to see that you failed.

 

Don't come in blaiming a video game for you incompetence.

 

 

BTW, most of the people having issues right now are nvidia/pentium mixes

 

why? I am not sure. something I have noticed.

 

[Drunk Russian 9]

 

Jeronimo Barrera: Let's not beat around the bush here. There's a lot of noise like this game doesn't run at all or there's missing textures and everything else. From what we've gathered a lot of those problems are either out of date drivers or we don't support that type of card or you're underspecced or whatever, it's always a combination of one of those things, it's not necessarily that we don't know what we're doing because obviously we put in hundreds and hundreds of hours of test into this. From what we did and from going through certification with Microsoft and our external QA process we didn't run into the amount of problems that the boards seemed to be saying there are. I know that Nvidia and ATI are constantly…I think they're releasing new drivers pretty soon.

Yepp, its just our hardware and drivers.

 

 

IGN: In the meantime you've got these people online who are pretty angry at you, to say the least. Is there anything you'd like to say to them?

 

Jeronimo Barrera: We stand behind our product and we'll get you help and it's easy to reach us. We do find the forums to be a very useful resource for us to identify problems that everyone's having…The game has been out less than a week and we are trying to address everything. In the long run we're going to keep supporting the title. It's not a one-shot deal. As much as people don't like to hear the word future-proofed but it is future-proofed and there's a lot in store for gamers.

At least they know we're here.

Edited December 6, 2008 by Drunk Russian 9

[null_]

Lmao, I just noticed this:

 

 

Costumers have always been honest, no matter what.

Thanks a lot for this, very thanks.

 

I hope they make good use of that, R*. I really do. Because they better fix this game up properly before it goes down to 1.2

[pimpinpenguin?]

Ah, the ole Rockstar denial where else have i heard this... Oh yeah when they denied that the Hot Coffee incident was their fault and the hacker created those files which were false. It's sad that they said they are going to support it, yet claim the game is fine which clearly it's not. Just watch we'll get a fix for the editor and the bowling glitch and perhaps a few other minor things, but the priority knowing Rockstar will be updating the protection for the patch.

[mva5580]

That was a pretty frustrating interview to read. On a number of levels.

 

That has to be the first time I've ever heard someone try to attach AA to DirectX 10 only. Really? Because I seem to play a lot of games in DX9, and they all have AA settings/capability. Why that guy said that is beyond me. And they've got this hard-on for future performance in the game, but there is no DX10? Do I really need to say anything other than that?

 

And from their comments, it doesn't even seem to me like they're all that worried about the performance complaints people are having. They mention fixing other bugs, but hardly any real hard evidence that they're going to be making adjustments to fix the performance related issues. Just sounds to me like 2 guys who think we all know jack crap about PC gaming and that it's our fault their masterpiece isn't running very good.

 

I'm sure not instilled with a whole lot of confidence that our problems are going to be fixed after reading that. I mean come on I've got a quad core PC, 4gb RAM, and an ATI 4850 video card. And while the game runs, it's just not enough of an enjoyable experience to want to play it for a long time. Choppy, way too much draw in, etc. And this is with the settings at very reasonable numbers.

 

Come on Rockstar, you're better than this. Right?

[DeeperRed]

"The Game doesn't have AA becuase its not DX10"

 

Now I see why this game is such a sh*t port, it was coded by a bunch of stupid f*ckwads. AA was in DX8 for christ sake.

[MMhardKy]

OK, the hope is lost. This confirms there will never be AA in the game, performance optimisations... and I want to bet with all of you there will never be any proper SLI support (even though they promised it). Fact is SLI is there, it's just scaling really bad (like 7% increase with 2 high end cards). Oh well...

 

 

And TruXter, your comments and "expert" knowledge in PC hardware are ridiculously funny! Keeo them coming!

[Krieger91]

 

I just posted a thread on the same interview, glad I'm not the only one outraged by those comments.

 

Oh and TruXter, I built my PC from scratch, I know my way around a PC, my rig has also been left un-clocked, didn't need it, so this is not a case of noobs with "all the gear no idea" tweaking their PC's to oblivion.

Wanna bet?

your board a "striker extreme" is ddr2

and your video card is what ?????

 

ddr3

 

processor is 1066MHz fsb

 

your board is 1333/1066/800MHz

 

unless you settled for the mid level ram

meet bottle neck #2

 

 

"Memory Standard   DDR2 800"

but I doubt you read that much on it

 

Yes, I understand that my RAM is slower than my FSB, I knew that when I bought it, it was what I could afford at the time, BUT, it doesn't mean my PC will choke to such a point that it won't be able to run this game at speed. Even with your so called "bottle-neck" it should _still_ be perfectly capable of running this game fast. My PC has no issues whatsoever running Crysis / Crysis Warhead which pisses all over this game graphically.

 

Oh, and for your information, I'm switching to Vista 64 Ultimate on Monday when it arrives, along with 8GB of 1066Mhz RAM.

 

And I do read up on this stuff, so don't even try and judge what I know and don't know.

Try hell. it took six seconds to see that you failed.

 

Don't come in blaiming a video game for you incompetence.

 

 

BTW, most of the people having issues right now are nvidia/pentium mixes

 

why? I am not sure. something I have noticed.

What are your specs Trux?

Edited December 6, 2008 by Krieger91

[TruXter]

 

I just posted a thread on the same interview, glad I'm not the only one outraged by those comments.

 

Oh and TruXter, I built my PC from scratch, I know my way around a PC, my rig has also been left un-clocked, didn't need it, so this is not a case of noobs with "all the gear no idea" tweaking their PC's to oblivion.

Wanna bet?

your board a "striker extreme" is ddr2

and your video card is what ?????

 

ddr3

 

processor is 1066MHz fsb

 

your board is 1333/1066/800MHz

 

unless you settled for the mid level ram

meet bottle neck #2

 

 

"Memory Standard�� DDR2 800"

but I doubt you read that much on it

 

Yes, I understand that my RAM is slower than my FSB, I knew that when I bought it, it was what I could afford at the time, BUT, it doesn't mean my PC will choke to such a point that it won't be able to run this game at speed. Even with your so called "bottle-neck" it should _still_ be perfectly capable of running this game fast. My PC has no issues whatsoever running Crysis / Crysis Warhead which pisses all over this game graphically.

 

Oh, and for your information, I'm switching to Vista 64 Ultimate on Monday when it arrives, along with 8GB of 1066Mhz RAM.

 

And I do read up on this stuff, so don't even try and judge what I know and don't know.

Try hell. it took six seconds to see that you failed.

 

Don't come in blaiming a video game for you incompetence.

 

 

BTW, most of the people having issues right now are nvidia/pentium mixes

 

why? I am not sure. something I have noticed.

What are your specs Trux?

Functionable.

 

Not the best or the greatest.

but working properly

 

 

amd 5600

evga 9500 gt 512 ddr2

4 gigs ballistix pc 6400 800 fsb ddr2

 

HardwareMicrosoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate Service Pack 1Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GTVideo Driver version: 180.84Audio Adapter: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+

 

[Drunk Russian 9]

 

"The Game doesn't have AA becuase its not DX10"

 

Now I see why this game is such a sh*t port, it was coded by a bunch of stupid f*ckwads. AA was in DX8 for christ sake.

Holy sh*t . . . this has to be QFT

[Rod6er]

I see many people here are shocked and confused that the game doesn't support AA. I think the main reason for that is the lighting system, the HDR. It just doesn't work in combination with AA unless they use DX10.

 

Good to see Rockstar was willing to do an interview, and I'm sure they knew that they would get comments like this. It's just typical of game forums these days.

 

Looking forward to the patch, with whatever improvements it brings

This man speaks the truth. It is not only a question of DX9 not supporting AA, which it does, it does not however support AA + HDR lighting (see oblivion for practical example)

[Rod6er]

That has to be the first time I've ever heard someone try to attach AA to DirectX 10 only. Really? Because I seem to play a lot of games in DX9, and they all have AA settings/capability. Why that guy said that is beyond me. And they've got this hard-on for future performance in the game, but there is no DX10? Do I really need to say anything other than that?

god dammit.

 

 

"The Game doesn't have AA becuase its not DX10"

 

Now I see why this game is such a sh*t port, it was coded by a bunch of stupid f*ckwads. AA was in DX8 for christ sake.

 

god dammit.

 

you are all clueless

[poro]

"The Game doesn't have AA becuase its not DX10"

 

Now I see why this game is such a sh*t port, it was coded by a bunch of stupid f*ckwads. AA was in DX8 for christ sake.

Holy sh*t . . . this has to be QFT

You two fail hard. It's the deferred rendering that prohibits the use of AA. AA can be used with deferred rendering in DX10, but not in DX9. Nevertheless, Rockstar should have made the game support DX10 in this case.

[Rod6er]

"The Game doesn't have AA becuase its not DX10"

 

Now I see why this game is such a sh*t port, it was coded by a bunch of stupid f*ckwads. AA was in DX8 for christ sake.

Holy sh*t . . . this has to be QFT

You two fail hard. It's the deferred rendering that prohibits the use of AA. AA can be used with deferred rendering in DX10, but not in DX9. Nevertheless, Rockstar should have made the game support DX10 in this case.

that is a legitimate complaint

[Nietzsche's God]

I see many people here are shocked and confused that the game doesn't support AA. I think the main reason for that is the lighting system, the HDR. It just doesn't work in combination with AA unless they use DX10.

 

Good to see Rockstar was willing to do an interview, and I'm sure they knew that they would get comments like this. It's just typical of game forums these days.

 

Looking forward to the patch, with whatever improvements it brings

This man speaks the truth. It is not only a question of DX9 not supporting AA, which it does, it does not however support AA + HDR lighting (see oblivion for practical example)

I am relatively new in the pc gaming experience. What is this AA? And what does it do for the quality of the game?

[pimpinpenguin?]

AA is Anti Aliasing, and basically all it does is smooths out all the jagged edges.

[mva5580]

It removes the jaggies from the game. Just look at the edges of buildings, cars, etc, and you'll notice they have jagged edges. Anti-Aliasing removes those edges.

 

And while that statement is true that you can't have the lighting effects with AA at the same time, Oblivion also gave you the option of having one or the other. GTA IV doesn't give us that option.

 

This game was just not programmed well. Period.

[TruXter]

AA is just a blurring of detail, it hides flaws. it does not make the image any better

it just burrs the image. In about 4 years when we have better video cards than what are out now

the game will look perfect.

 

this means they put in to much for us to handle right now.

 

this is a great thing.

 

 

I am not much one for blur and aa lag.

[L0uNGeR]

AA is just a blurring of detail, it hides flaws. it does not make the image any better

it just burrs the image in about 4 years when we have better video cards than what are out now

the game will look perfect.

 

this means they put in to much for us to handle right now.

 

this is a great thing.

 

 

I am not much one for blur and aa lag.

LOL, whut?

Maybe you are confused with the P button in GTA IV PC.

 

 

Modern graphics cards usually support some method of full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA) to help avoid aliasing (or "jaggies") on full-screen images. The resulting image may seem softer, and should also appear more realistic.

 

In some case you might be right, but AA is far from "blurring" an image.

 

What we really want is Supersampling.

 

 

In general, supersampling is a technique of collecting data points at a greater resolution (usually by a power of two) than the final data resolution. These data points are then combined (down-sampled) to the desired resolution, often just by a simple average. The combined data points have less visible aliasing artifacts (or moiré patterns).

[craig3000]

why cant they just be honest?

 

if they told us the truth and just told us how they would combat it

 

ok some people don't like R* much atm but surely it they would gain more respect than blatant lies

 

i mean come on 1%, you have to have a friggen good, bug free game to get 1%, all forums are lit up about it more so than any other PC game for a while is that not a sign? no AA because of DX9 rubbish if they had just said AA was not possible for whatever reason i think we would be happier

 

tell the truth gain our respect

 

personally im having no problems

[Jonny2410]

i wouldn't care if there were all these lag problems if the game actually looked amazing

 

But the fact is at max settings, which i can do on my 4870 x2 but lags lol, doesnt even compare to crysis etc.

 

If it was Dx10 maybe i could understand but its f*cking dx9 without any AA and it lags!

 

Its not people's hardware its : sh*t OPTIMIZATION PORTING A CONSOLE GAME.

 

Even on the console it f*cking lagged lol!

 

I like GTA IV (multiplayer etc) but the whole game (iv) not 3, vc and sa has been a complete failure.

[number1fanny]

 

i wouldn't care if there were all these lag problems if the game actually looked amazing

 

But the fact is at max settings, which i can do on my 4870 x2 but lags lol, doesnt even compare to crysis etc.

 

If it was Dx10 maybe i could understand but its f*cking dx9 without any AA and it lags!

 

Its not people's hardware its : sh*t OPTIMIZATION PORTING A CONSOLE GAME.

 

Even on the console it f*cking lagged lol!

 

I like GTA IV (multiplayer etc) but the whole game (iv) not 3, vc and sa has been a complete failure.

no, it doesn't lag on the 360 version at least. it's smooth as f*ck.

[DipolaredBoose]

AA is just a blurring of detail, it hides flaws. it does not make the image any better

it just burrs the image. In about 4 years when we have better video cards than what are out now

the game will look perfect.

 

this means they put in to much for us to handle right now.

 

this is a great thing.

 

 

I am not much one for blur and aa lag.

MSAA doesn't blur ANYTHING. supersampling do , in a certain way , but give an amazing smoothing in return.

and you don't know what you are talking.

i 'm sure my HD4870 1GB can handle 4x AA in GTA4. it has enough fillrate for it. i will need to reduce a bit my picture resolution , but it can handle it, definitly .

 

Once again , multisampling DON'T BLUR ANYTHING.

 

[Jonny2410]

i wouldn't care if there were all these lag problems if the game actually looked amazing

 

But the fact is at max settings, which i can do on my 4870 x2 but lags lol, doesnt even compare to crysis etc.

 

If it was Dx10 maybe i could understand but its f*cking dx9 without any AA and it lags!

 

Its not people's hardware its : sh*t OPTIMIZATION PORTING A CONSOLE GAME.

 

Even on the console it f*cking lagged lol!

 

I like GTA IV (multiplayer etc) but the whole game (iv) not 3, vc and sa has been a complete failure.

no, it doesn't lag on the 360 version at least. it's smooth as f*ck.

oh right well it did at the beginning and still doed on ps3 - stutters sometimes and generally is sh*t, i gave up with it after 2 weeks.

 

Still bottom line is the pc version is a terrible port with sh*t optimization.