Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years(me3tweaks.com)

79 points by DLay 4 years ago | 26 comments

Video games are a weird type of application. They seem to be one of the only applications that isn't in the process of becoming a web application (outside of just rending it on a remote server and even that isn't growing very fast). This is despite the fact that every platform/OS essentially has had it's own graphics library/interface (DirectX, OpenGL, Metal). At least Vulkan seems to be making a lot o progress in making more things cross platform although IIRC it leaves a lot of area to be implementation specific.

I think the dominance of Windows & console for video games has meant that developers are much more used to shipping immutable dependencies with their game. Relying on Windows SxS to avoid DLL hell. While they might provide updates for the game for a few years there are mostly game related updates rather than library updates (at least from what I have seen).

The big downside to this is that some things which shouldn't be dependent on the game developer providing updates like controller support, game engine fixes, etc.

I'm not sure if the problem is just the game developer/publisher not having any financial motivation to reexport/update their games or if the game engines themselves make it difficult to provide these kinds of updates.

armchairhacker 4 years ago | |

Video games aren’t becoming web applications precisely because there are so many GPU libraries. I think this is also why they have so many immutable dependencies: they rely on low-level optimizations and various hacks which break on newer libraries.

Video games need to do expensive computations in real time. Most other apps don’t, which is why they can be ported to the web.

lmm 4 years ago | | |

The other side is that video games have a lot less need to be correct than most applications. Even a blatant user-visible bug is probably fine (and might even add to the fun). Crashing is a problem, but running with massive state errors often isn't.

gh02t 4 years ago | |

Arguably they have an incentive not to support games for years. Not when they can re-release the same game with a little refresh 10 years later to "fix" issues.

halfmatthalfcat 4 years ago |

I just played through the Legendary Edition and am going through Andromeda now. While I think ME1 is definitely the best, they all have really interesting mechanics that spice up each subsequent game in the series. I was presently surprised that Andromeda took a lot more risks that, imo, have been paying off so far.

Andrew_nenakhov 4 years ago | |

Weapons ammo retcon was done very clumsily and broke the lore established in the first game. If they wanted to change the gameplay and make players break cover more often, they should have just hand vaiwe this issue without explanation.

thrower123 4 years ago | | |

The ammo retcon was part of such a bigger shift. My main complaint is that adding the heat clips instead of cooldown gimped sniper rifles disproportionately. But shifting from the open outdoor environments with the Mako in ME1 to more contained levels in ME2 also disincentivized snipers.

I had most of my fun playing ME1 trying to take ridiculous long shots on targets outside of the radar range. With some configurations of mods, which ME2 also slashed, this was really effective and kind of hilarious. Some of the physics damage mods on sniper rifles would blow enemies right into the air.

XorNot 4 years ago | | |

I cannot upvote this enough. The reasoning was solid: for gameplay reasons, ammo worked better.

There's no way to really explain that in lore - but also no reason too: just make the change, and pretend it always was. Players are willing to just go with a solid change like that for solid reasons - you ruin it once you try to explain it in-universe.

throwaway6734 4 years ago | | |

Agree! I loved the lore and universe built up in the codex

Thaxll 4 years ago | |

ME1 has more RPG elements but ME2 is the best of the serie.

Andrew_nenakhov 4 years ago | | |

me2 had some nice character moments, but its main plot was very stupid with ridiculous reasoning that threw away all appeal of me1. Best elements of me2 (and me3!!) were stories that expanded the stories, already established in the first game (genophage and quarians/geth conflict).

To anyone who thinks ME2 is better, I can only recommend this mighty analysis of the series: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792

Lots of parts, but it highlights all the problems of the second and third games really well.

paulmd 4 years ago |

Easily the worst DLC in the game. I replayed it around 2017, a few years before ME:LE came out and it's basically some horde survival modes and timed killing sprees. ME1 didn't age well in general (it's kinda like Half-Life 1 - it had some good parts, but "was innovative when it came out but just doesn't play well to modern sensibilities") and this DLC was the worst part of it.

Andrew_nenakhov 4 years ago |

Mass Effect 1 is the best game in the series, and these guys deserve wholehearted praise for their efforts.