*OLD*Official Bioshock Thread

[torpid]

Got it last night over steam. Ordered it at 5:30 and was able to play at 7:30.

I'm running an Opteron 144, BFG 7800 gt, and 2gb of RAM on Win XP Pro. The game plays fairly smoothly. I left it at the default settings which were mostly "high".

No major problems to report. There is one annoying sound related issue. I don't have the latest sound card from creative, mine is a couple of iterations old. I'm not sure if that's the cause, but basically, I often can't at all hear what the guy over the comm is saying to me, because other sounds are overpowering him. Is there a way to review what he said or to turn on subtitles? I tweaked the sound settings so that voiceovers are higher, but really, that doesn't help since the usual sound overpowering it was some EVE head yelling at me from 3 rooms away. Which brings up the other issue... why can I hear people 3 rooms away like they are inside my skull? I've got it set to 5.1 and even tried 7.1 which my speakers technically are.

Aside from the sound quirks, I have no technical complaints. At this exact moment, about 30-60 minutes in, the game seems a little overrated to me. It feels like a very canned game so far. I can tell already that it is better than FEAR but I was hoping for Far Cry or Half Life. This just seems somewhere in between so far. Perhaps I'm still in the "you're getting used to the game, give it time" phase, I don't know. It just feels too constrained and linear. I don't feel immersed yet.

I've already found places where the environments are limited for no reason. Such as a fire on one staircase. I can definitely jump over it using the physics of the game, but there's an invisible wall. I have a wrench, but I can't break apart glass to get through. Stuff like that. Kind of strange for a game in this day and age.

Still, I am enjoying it enough to want to continue. That alone is remarkable considering how little patience I have for games. I feel that there is a lot to this game and I haven't seen it yet. I just hope the gameplay becomes a little more immersive and less, go to X on the Map and do Y then come back and do Z. I want to discover stuff on my own, damnit.

 

[Polish3d]

Originally posted by: Aikouka

Originally posted by: pcslookout
Canai yep, if we really had problems playing games with horrible graphics none of us would of owned a SNES back in the day. I remember a game called S.O.S. for SNES and it may not have had great graphics but it had great gameplay. The gamplay is far worth more than any graphics! Gameplay is like air you need to to be able to enjoy a game.

Umm you do realize that the SNES was fairly high-powered graphic-wise back in the day, right? No one was running around saying, "Pfft, look at this super mario world without FSAA 16x! I CAN STILL SEE THE JAGGIES!" No. Horrible analogy.

People complain about the lack of hi-res textures because some people play in higher resolutions and need the better textures or else the game will look bland when textures are stretched. This isn't the case for the XBOX 360 where everything is rendered at 720p and resized accordingly by the hardware scaler.

Well said. Back in those days I'd read gamepro and their rating system had the same basic components ours do now, one of which was graphic quality, which is always relative.

Also, I think you nailed it with the texture issue. The poor textures are less apparent at 1280x1024 and below

 

[Painman]

FOV fix now working for demo and full retail game...

WSGF Link

Read through thread for info on Vista support...

 

[Dallows]

I am just retarded or can we NOT give our saved games a name of our chosing? IMO the saving system sucks.

 

[Polish3d]

Ok I just started the game up again. The graphics are consolized, that's what it is. It looks fine on a low res screen but not on a decent res PC.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: Dallows
I am just retarded or can we NOT give our saved games a name of our chosing? IMO the saving system sucks.

yeap. the save game system sucks.

 

[Ichigo]

Originally posted by: Frackal

Your particular tastes are not universal, either. It is a good game. A great game even. Why don't you go play some oblivion to get your graphics fix, and them come back to Bioshock when you want a deeply immersive, creepy, and downright twisted world?

I'm definitely an eye candy whore, but I've failed to see all these inconsistencies that have been mentioned. Maybe I'm just too tired or too sick of work, but wake up and smell the gameplay.

And just because the graphics aren't amazing (which I think is debatable) I fail to see an inconsistency in quality throughout the game.

And by "game for the game" I mean for the gameplay. I don't play games to look at pretty pictures, I play games for the gameplay.

From playing it, (IMO), it's a game with a great premise and enjoyable gameplay, with graphics that make it difficult to enjoy at a level that HL2 or Far Cry et al have been, because of the poorer appearance, particularly at higher resolutions or widescreen.

There is no reason for you to be so concerned with what I think of the game. My impression is as I've described, and it's not going to change because I've read a post or two that you've written here.

There's no reason for you to be concerned over what other people think of your opinion, in that case. Their impression of you is as they've described, and it's not oging to change because they've read a post or two that you've written here.

In any case, I have yet to see those who find the graphics disappointing mention anything of the game besides that. The rest of the game aside from the graphics seems to be forgotten. You guys wonder why focus is put towards the consoles. This is why. They aren't in riots; they're playing the game right now. They sure as hell are not threatening to pirate the game.

Personally, the low resolution textures are not what I expect on a PC game. Nor were Oblivions textures when viewed from a distance outside. The latter was mended through hacks and then conclusively with a texture replacement. It is doubtless that the story will be the same for the texture issue in Bioshock, even without a dedicated mod tool. If this is the greatest complaint of a game, it is quite a compliment. I've only seen a few posts specifically point out the gameplay/world/etc. (not graphics) were poor.

Widescreen FOV (since FOV is the problem, some of you don't get that) has been fixed, textures will be fixed (delay your purchase until then if you must), and the activation policy is fine, according to 2k (not that I would put much stock into that, myself). Uninstall and then install on a new machine. It *seems* okay, but I guess I'll see.

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Originally posted by: torpid
I'm not sure if that's the cause, but basically, I often can't at all hear what the guy over the comm is saying to me, because other sounds are overpowering him...Which brings up the other issue... why can I hear people 3 rooms away like they are inside my skull? I've got it set to 5.1 and even tried 7.1 which my speakers technically are.

Same here. Atlas and Ryan get drowned out by enemies on a different floor. I'm using Realtek HD.

At this exact moment, about 30-60 minutes in, the game seems a little overrated to me. It feels like a very canned game so far. I can tell already that it is better than FEAR but I was hoping for Far Cry or Half Life. This just seems somewhere in between so far. Perhaps I'm still in the "you're getting used to the game, give it time" phase, I don't know. It just feels too constrained and linear. I don't feel immersed yet.

Exactly how I felt. There's no ZOMG yet. I do need to give it another spin cos the start of HL2 is very slow to be fair, even if it felt more epic

I just hope the gameplay becomes a little more immersive and less, go to X on the Map and do Y then come back and do Z. I want to discover stuff on my own, damnit.

[/quote]

:thumbsup:

In the cut-scene at the theatre with the Big Daddy, it pissed me off that I could walk around but they'd disabled jump. I guess that's so you can't get down into that area but it pisses me off all the same

 

[imported_Imp]

PSh.... eff this. What the hell is with the retarded "design" choices: chopped widescreen and this bullsh~t 2 install thing? Ya, they'll probably fix the WS issue by the time I finish the freaking game. And the 2 install thing is stupid down the road. I just read about it on Firingsquad, and they've played around with it; seems like you're screwed if you do a HDD format and forget to uninstall first. Then you'll have to start calling for a new key. Retarded copy protection...

So, we have an Xbox360 in the house, and the owner of it has been telling me to get it for that instead of my PC. Think I'll just do it. It's $15 more, but hey, my 2407 will actually gimp the graphics instead of giving me more view. My POS TV is 4:3, so it'll actually show more.

 

[ethebubbeth]

Originally posted by: zerodeefex
Wait, why are so many people confusing "widescreen support" with FOV? Do you think that your character magically has more peripheral vision when you have a widescreen monitor? Maybe they developed for widescreen and then extended the FOV for 4:3 monitors, since that's the majority? Who knows why, but a lot of people whine about this.

Exactly! The game was primarily developed for the 360, which has 16:9 (720p) as it's native resolution. People using a widescreen monitor have the HOV that the game was intended for. Anybody playing on a 4:3 display is having their viewable area extended beyond what the developer intended.

For example, films such as Air Force One that use the Super35 film format, are shot for the theater intended as 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, but are also shot in such a way that they can be expanded to 4:3 for pan & scan version with no harmful effects to scene composition.

In the following image, the box shows how the film was intended for theaters, while the rest of the image is how it is shown on the 4:3 pan & scan. The widescreen is how it was intended, but there is no harm to the composition when expanded to 4:3 (since that was planned due to being shot in super35)
How it's seen in original widescreen.
How it is seen in the expanded pan & scan.

Taken from the 2k forums:

'We understand there has been some concern about the implementation of widescreen mode in BioShock. Hopefully, we can clarify how we?ve chosen to do this.

The first thing we want to make clear is the mode we developed the game on and the optimal mode for playing the game is the widescreen mode. 90% of our development stations were widescreen displays: artists, programmers and designers.

- BioShock was primarily developed and tuned for widescreen mode. Artists and designers worked with widescreen displays and chose a field of view (FOV) that best reflected their intentions with respect to the way the world is perceived, the perceived speed of movement of the player relative to the world and the amount of the world they wanted to be viewed for the best game-play experience. We went through dozens of iterations and finally settled upon a widescreen aspect ratio that best suited the gameplay experience.

- When playing in widescreen modes the game makes use of the full screen resolution, and does not crop or stretch a lower resolution image into a wide screen one. For example, at 720p the game renders natively to the full 1280x720 resolution.

- Once this FOV was established, we chose to keep exactly the same horizontal FOV for standard def displays, so as not to in any way alter the gameplay experience.

- Instead of cropping the FOV for 4:3 displays and making all 4:3 owners mad in doing so, we slightly extended the vertical FOV for standard def mode: we never wanted to have black bars on people?s displays. (This way, everybody is happy?) This does mean that people playing on a standard def display see slightly more vertical space, but, this does not significantly affect the game-play experience and, we felt that it best served our goal of keeping the game experience as close as possible to the original design and art vision on both types of displays. Reports of the widescreen FOV being a crop of the 4:3 FOV are completely false.

One thing we can assure you that all these decisions were made with the best interests of the game in mind. We didn?t save any money or development time by choosing this set of parameters. We did what we thought was the best thing for the game: developing and optimizing it for widescreen displays, and making the decision not to do the usual crop for 4:3 displays. As a consumer, you certainly have the right to disagree.

We understand that not all users might not be happy with these choices and we will be looking into options for allowing users to adjust FOV settings manually. But as we mentioned earlier, changes to video game code do not happen in minutes or hours. We appreciate your understanding'"

 

[swtethan]

I am tired of the other thread turning into a crapfest of copyprotection/AA/Widescreen complaints. This thread is about the gameplay of bioshock.

Please contribute to the Official Bioshock thread already in existence, this will help keep our forum organized.

If you feel there is abuse/violation of Anandtech rules in the main thread please PM the Anandtech Moderator account.
Oakenfold-PC Gaming Mod

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: ethebubbeth

Originally posted by: zerodeefex
Wait, why are so many people confusing "widescreen support" with FOV? Do you think that your character magically has more peripheral vision when you have a widescreen monitor? Maybe they developed for widescreen and then extended the FOV for 4:3 monitors, since that's the majority? Who knows why, but a lot of people whine about this.

Exactly! The game was primarily developed for the 360, which has 16:9 (720p) as it's native resolution. People using a widescreen monitor have the HOV that the game was intended for. Anybody playing on a 4:3 display is having their viewable area extended beyond what the developer intended.

For example, films such as Air Force One that use the Super35 film format, are shot for the theater intended as 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, but are also shot in such a way that they can be expanded to 4:3 for pan & scan version with no harmful effects to scene composition.

In the following image, the box shows how the film was intended for theaters, while the rest of the image is how it is shown on the 4:3 pan & scan. The widescreen is how it was intended, but there is no harm to the composition when expanded to 4:3 (since that was planned due to being shot in super35)
How it's seen in original widescreen.
How it is seen in the expanded pan & scan.

Taken from the 2k forums:

'We understand there has been some concern about the implementation of widescreen mode in BioShock. Hopefully, we can clarify how we?ve chosen to do this.

The first thing we want to make clear is the mode we developed the game on and the optimal mode for playing the game is the widescreen mode. 90% of our development stations were widescreen displays: artists, programmers and designers.

- BioShock was primarily developed and tuned for widescreen mode. Artists and designers worked with widescreen displays and chose a field of view (FOV) that best reflected their intentions with respect to the way the world is perceived, the perceived speed of movement of the player relative to the world and the amount of the world they wanted to be viewed for the best game-play experience. We went through dozens of iterations and finally settled upon a widescreen aspect ratio that best suited the gameplay experience.

- When playing in widescreen modes the game makes use of the full screen resolution, and does not crop or stretch a lower resolution image into a wide screen one. For example, at 720p the game renders natively to the full 1280x720 resolution.

- Once this FOV was established, we chose to keep exactly the same horizontal FOV for standard def displays, so as not to in any way alter the gameplay experience.

- Instead of cropping the FOV for 4:3 displays and making all 4:3 owners mad in doing so, we slightly extended the vertical FOV for standard def mode: we never wanted to have black bars on people?s displays. (This way, everybody is happy?) This does mean that people playing on a standard def display see slightly more vertical space, but, this does not significantly affect the game-play experience and, we felt that it best served our goal of keeping the game experience as close as possible to the original design and art vision on both types of displays. Reports of the widescreen FOV being a crop of the 4:3 FOV are completely false.

One thing we can assure you that all these decisions were made with the best interests of the game in mind. We didn?t save any money or development time by choosing this set of parameters. We did what we thought was the best thing for the game: developing and optimizing it for widescreen displays, and making the decision not to do the usual crop for 4:3 displays. As a consumer, you certainly have the right to disagree.

We understand that not all users might not be happy with these choices and we will be looking into options for allowing users to adjust FOV settings manually. But as we mentioned earlier, changes to video game code do not happen in minutes or hours. We appreciate your understanding'"

so basically it was made for WS and standard screens are the ones who have zoomed out view

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: ethebubbeth

Originally posted by: zerodeefex
Wait, why are so many people confusing "widescreen support" with FOV? Do you think that your character magically has more peripheral vision when you have a widescreen monitor? Maybe they developed for widescreen and then extended the FOV for 4:3 monitors, since that's the majority? Who knows why, but a lot of people whine about this.

Exactly! The game was primarily developed for the 360, which has 16:9 (720p) as it's native resolution. People using a widescreen monitor have the HOV that the game was intended for. Anybody playing on a 4:3 display is having their viewable area extended beyond what the developer intended.

[/quote]

I'll come off as a bigger prick than I already am , but here's what I think most people are pissed about (including me) with the way widescreen is done. Before recently, widescreen has pretty much been a "luxury" until 19" WS came in. Thus, many people who paid $100 or more (way way more) for their WS are pissed that 4:3 "squares" of the "past" are getting more. Like I said in my above post, I paid an as*load more for my 24" WS than the 10 year old 4:3 25" CRT sitting in my living room that I'd get more FOV from for this game. It is whiney, no doubt, but getting more for less is annoying.

 

[Ichigo]

Originally posted by: Imp
PSh.... eff this. What the hell is with the retarded "design" choices: chopped widescreen and this bullsh~t 2 install thing? Ya, they'll probably fix the WS issue by the time I finish the freaking game. And the 2 install thing is stupid down the road. I just read about it on Firingsquad, and they've played around with it; seems like you're screwed if you do a HDD format and forget to uninstall first. Then you'll have to start calling for a new key. Retarded copy protection...

So, we have an Xbox360 in the house, and the owner of it has been telling me to get it for that instead of my PC. Think I'll just do it. It's $15 more, but hey, my 2407 will actually gimp the graphics instead of giving me more view. My POS TV is 4:3, so it'll actually show more.

http://www.widescreengamingfor...ic.php?p=108586#108586

I posted that it was already fixed. Midway down that thread is the FOV fixer v1.1. Check it out. There are people running the Triplehead, and it even works fine for them.

You could just buy a $20 VGA cable and run your 360 off of your 2407, you know? It's what I do.

 

[ethebubbeth]

Originally posted by: Imp
I'll come off as a bigger prick than I already am , but here's what I think most people are pissed about (including me) with the way widescreen is done. Before recently, widescreen has pretty much been a "luxury" until 19" WS came in. Thus, many people who paid $100 or more (way way more) for their WS are pissed that 4:3 "squares" of the "past" are getting more. Like I said in my above post, I paid an as*load more for my 24" WS than the 10 year old 4:3 25" CRT sitting in my living room that I'd get more FOV from for this game. It is whiney, no doubt, but getting more for less is annoying.

If anything, I'm getting less on my 4:3 because I'm not seeing it the way the developer intended it. I'm planning on moving my computer over to my 720p LCDTV in order to play it how it is supposed to be. Then again, I was angry when the HDDVD of Full Metal Jacket was 16:9 instead of the 4:3 intended by Kubrick. I prefer to see my media in whatever format was originally mandated by its creator.

My only real technical complaint with the game thus far is the texture resolution... but I can more than live with it for now. Here's hoping that somebody releases a high quality texture pack for it (a la oblivion).

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: Ichigo

Originally posted by: Imp
PSh.... eff this. What the hell is with the retarded "design" choices: chopped widescreen and this bullsh~t 2 install thing? Ya, they'll probably fix the WS issue by the time I finish the freaking game. And the 2 install thing is stupid down the road. I just read about it on Firingsquad, and they've played around with it; seems like you're screwed if you do a HDD format and forget to uninstall first. Then you'll have to start calling for a new key. Retarded copy protection...

So, we have an Xbox360 in the house, and the owner of it has been telling me to get it for that instead of my PC. Think I'll just do it. It's $15 more, but hey, my 2407 will actually gimp the graphics instead of giving me more view. My POS TV is 4:3, so it'll actually show more.

http://www.widescreengamingfor...ic.php?p=108586#108586

I posted that it was already fixed. Midway down that thread is the FOV fixer v1.1. Check it out. There are people running the Triplehead, and it even works fine for them.

You could just buy a $20 VGA cable and run your 360 off of your 2407, you know? It's what I do.

Thank you, missed that.

As for running THE 360 of MY 2407, due to "politics", I will not allow that. It's a sibling's, and I won't let him plug it in, otherwise he'll be hogging/messing with it and the $700 sound system I payed for. We can't open that can of worms.

 

[Ichigo]

Another post, sorry. This is quoted from a googlestater at wsg forums, and explains the developer's choice (even if it was the wrong one) and how to use the tool found in the link of my previous post:

"Cliff notes:
Skip to table 1 if you want to play as the Devs designed the game, and only correct for the widescreen zoom. Use numbers in the table on the sliders (both sliders MUST MATCH). Skip to table 2 if you wish to play as if the base FOV in 4:3 was 90 degrees (like many FPS games) according to the FOVcalc (linked at top of web page). Skip to table 3 if you wish to play as if the base FOV in 4:3 was 90 degrees according to alternate calculations by Drexion and I. If you feel nauseous from the Dev's small FOV (especially in 4:3), table 3 is for you.
Read on if you want technical, brain numbing, details and math.

Part 1)
I'm sure there will be disagreement here, but if you go in front of a doorway with a circle on it, you can see that the horizontal and vertical sliders MUST MATCH to maintain proper aspect ratio.
If there's too much disagreement on this, I'll post screenshots tomorrow of 4:3 vs 16:9 and various slider settings when close to an in-game circle.
This premise is what guides all the calculations below.
If they don't match, you are throwing off the relationship between horizonal FOV and vertical FOV. Now, if the devs did widescreen properly, you would NEED to adjust them differantly. They didn't, they essentially zoomed in (and cropped, but that part doesn't really matter for this). So you are essentially viewing a 4:3 screen on a 16:9 monitor for example. The devs are maintaining the proper 4:3 relationship between vertical and horizontal FOV already. So you merely have to zoom it back out, keeping the same relationship between the vert/horiz FOV's/sliders.

Essentially all you need to do to fix the devs mistake is zoom out until the heights match again without the devs cropping (i.e. compensate for the dev's cropping). The sides will take care of themselves.


Part 2)
Here's the numbers for BOTH sliders if you want to keep the base FOV of 75 degrees that the devs use
Table 1:
16:9 = 0.75 sliders. Effective FOV = 100 degrees
16:10 = 0.833 sliders. Effective FOV = 90 degrees
5:4 = 1.066 sliders. Effective FOV = 70.4 degrees
4:3 = 1.0 sliders. Effective FOV = 75 degrees

Those are the corrective numbers to fix the zoom in that the devs do. That will reverse the zoom back down to the point where it will add the proper FOV to make up the differance between widescreen and full screen.
In the case of 5:4, its more square, not more widescreen. I dont have a 5:4 screen so I cannot verify that the game does a reverse zoom on it, but since it seems like they want to lock it to a FOV of 75 degrees, thats what makes sense to me. The only way to tell would be to switch resolutions between a 5:4 res and a 4:3 res and see if you gain part of top and bottom, instead of losing it on screenshots
[The numbers are derived by looking at what it takes to get the heights on a ratio to equal. So for instance, using a factor of 4 (this number is something to do with LCM least common multiple I belive, I know how to do it but I'm not sure of the exact term), you can multiply a 4:3 ratio into 16:12 ratio without changing the ratio itself. Now you have equal widths, 16:12 and 16:9. So you look at the height differance, its a factor of 0.75 (9 divided by 12). So theres your 0.75 corrective factor for thier zoom. Find the LCM between 16:10 & 4:3 and the LCM between 5:4 & 4:3 if you wish to verify the other numbers]


Part 3)
This part is if you want to start with a base of 90 degrees (for those who want to just increase the base FOV without regard to the devs design of 75 degree FOV). FOV of 90 degrees is found in such games as Doom, Half life, Quake 3, UT2k4
I used the FOV calculator here, telling it I had a base of 90 degrees:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/fovcalc.php
And then took those numbers to get an idea of what the slider should be
Table2:
16:9 = 0.706 sliders. Effective FOV 106 degrees
16:10 = 0.75 sliders. Effective FOV 100 degrees
5:4 = 0.869 sliders. Effective FOV 86.3 degrees
4:3 = 0.833 sliders. Effective FOV 90 degrees

Part 4)
This is starting with a base of 90 degrees (as opposed to the dev's design of 75 degrees) but doing some alternate calculations for FOV's on other types of monitors. Here's Drexion's calculations:
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/7850/66811434ke6.jpg
My calculations (which are the same idea, just going about it a differant way) are that I start with a 16:12 monitor (4:3 adjusted with LCM) and compare it to a 16:9 monitor. Comparing the 12 and 9 we see that 12 = 1.33 * 9. So 16:9 should have a 1.33 times wider FOV. So the base 90 degrees FOV * 1.33 is 120 degrees. I'm unsure as to why this is quite differant than the FOVcalc, but there it is.
Table 3:
16:9 = 0.625 sliders. Effective FOV 120 degrees
16:10 = 0.694 sliders. Effective FOV 108 degrees
5:4 = 0.888 sliders. Effective FOV 84.375 degrees
4:3 = 0.833 sliders. Effective FOV 90 degrees

Part 5)
If you want an exact FOV, just divide 75 by your desired FOV. For instance, if you want 105 degrees FOV, 75 / 105 = 0.714 for both sliders.
The reason this works is that the devs designed the game to have a constant FOV of 75 degrees, regardless of your resolution, which is where thier unwanted zoom comes in the picture.

HUGE thanks to Racer_S who did the tool!
Also thanks to Drexion who has a 5:4 monitor and helped me out with some stuff.

Edit: I edited quite a number of things after discussing points with Drexion, I also cleaned it up a bit, added cliff notes, italics, etc."

my edit @ imp: Ahahahaha, I get that.

 

[idiotekniQues]

coming from an fps player who has played the demo and downloaded the full version from steam - the gameply feels a bit more arcade-like for my tastes but since i know this game is not supposed to be a straight up FPS shooter - the ambience, atmosphere and overall immersion of this game is excellent.

cant wait to explore more of it and use more of the toys.

 

[Ichigo]

I'm so sorry, but here is the information from the developer's mouth:

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/home.html

"THE TRUTH ABOUT WIDESCREEN
August 22, 2007
We understand there has been some concern about the implementation of widescreen mode in BioShock. Hopefully, we can clarify how we?ve chosen to do this.

The first thing we want to make clear is the mode we developed the game on and the optimal mode for playing the game is the widescreen mode. 90% of our development stations were widescreen displays: artists, programmers and designers.

- BioShock was primarily developed and tuned for widescreen mode. Artists and designers worked with widescreen displays and chose a field of view (FOV) that best reflected their intentions with respect to the way the world is perceived, the perceived speed of movement of the player relative to the world and the amount of the world they wanted to be viewed for the best game-play experience. We went through dozens of iterations and finally settled upon a widescreen aspect ratio that best suited the gameplay experience.

- When playing in widescreen modes the game makes use of the full screen resolution, and does not crop or stretch a lower resolution image into a wide screen one. For example, at 720p the game renders natively to the full 1280x720 resolution.

- Once this FOV was established, we chose to keep exactly the same horizontal FOV for standard def displays, so as not to in any way alter the gameplay experience.

- Instead of cropping the FOV for 4:3 displays and making all 4:3 owners mad in doing so, we slightly extended the vertical FOV for standard def mode: we never wanted to have black bars on people?s displays. (This way, everybody is happy?) This does mean that people playing on a standard def display see slightly more vertical space, but, this does not significantly affect the game-play experience and, we felt that it best served our goal of keeping the game experience as close as possible to the original design and art vision on both types of displays. Reports of the widescreen FOV being a crop of the 4:3 FOV are completely false.

One thing we can assure you that all these decisions were made with the best interests of the game in mind. We didn?t save any money or development time by choosing this set of parameters. We did what we thought was the best thing for the game: developing and optimizing it for widescreen displays, and making the decision not to do the usual crop for 4:3 displays. As a consumer, you certainly have the right to disagree.

We understand that not all users might not be happy with these choices and we will be looking into options for allowing users to adjust FOV settings manually. But as we mentioned earlier, changes to video game code do not happen in minutes or hours. We appreciate your understanding.


- Elizabeth"

 

[flashbacck]

Originally posted by: torpid... At this exact moment, about 30-60 minutes in, the game seems a little overrated to me. It feels like a very canned game so far. I can tell already that it is better than FEAR but I was hoping for Far Cry or Half Life. This just seems somewhere in between so far. Perhaps I'm still in the "you're getting used to the game, give it time" phase, I don't know. It just feels too constrained and linear. I don't feel immersed yet...

It's weird that you mention this. This is almost exactly what a gamernode review said.

..I was a little worried at first, because the first hour or two of the game really gave no indication that BioShock is anything other than a good looking generic shooter. Just as I was wondering what would happen if I were the first person to give BioShock a non-awesome score, things picked up, and I knew I didn't have to worry any longer, and that I was in for a hell of a ride...

It'd be interesting to hear if you think the same in another hr or two.

 

[Polish3d]

Originally posted by: Ichigo

Originally posted by: Frackal

Your particular tastes are not universal, either. It is a good game. A great game even. Why don't you go play some oblivion to get your graphics fix, and them come back to Bioshock when you want a deeply immersive, creepy, and downright twisted world?

I'm definitely an eye candy whore, but I've failed to see all these inconsistencies that have been mentioned. Maybe I'm just too tired or too sick of work, but wake up and smell the gameplay.

And just because the graphics aren't amazing (which I think is debatable) I fail to see an inconsistency in quality throughout the game.

And by "game for the game" I mean for the gameplay. I don't play games to look at pretty pictures, I play games for the gameplay.

From playing it, (IMO), it's a game with a great premise and enjoyable gameplay, with graphics that make it difficult to enjoy at a level that HL2 or Far Cry et al have been, because of the poorer appearance, particularly at higher resolutions or widescreen.

There is no reason for you to be so concerned with what I think of the game. My impression is as I've described, and it's not going to change because I've read a post or two that you've written here.

There's no reason for you to be concerned over what other people think of your opinion, in that case. Their impression of you is as they've described, and it's not oging to change because they've read a post or two that you've written here.

what

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

My 19" WS was cheap as chips so I'm not worried about that "luxury" side of it. I just replayed the demo with the FOV fixer and it feels a lot better. No idea what the devs were smoking when they decided on how the final version should look but that's only my opinion. :beer:'s to the guys that made the fix :thumbsup:

Still on the fence regarding a purchase.

 

[TheUnk]

If all future games are first designed in 16:9 and then they increase the vertical FOV for 4:3 displays, I'd probably end up going out and buying a new 4:3 display. I like having more, not less.

 

[Polish3d]

Originally posted by: Ichigo
I'm so sorry, but here is the information from the developer's mouth:

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/home.html

"THE TRUTH ABOUT WIDESCREEN
August 22, 2007
We understand there has been some concern about the implementation of widescreen mode in BioShock. Hopefully, we can clarify how we?ve chosen to do this.

The first thing we want to make clear is the mode we developed the game on and the optimal mode for playing the game is the widescreen mode. 90% of our development stations were widescreen displays: artists, programmers and designers.

- BioShock was primarily developed and tuned for widescreen mode. Artists and designers worked with widescreen displays and chose a field of view (FOV) that best reflected their intentions with respect to the way the world is perceived, the perceived speed of movement of the player relative to the world and the amount of the world they wanted to be viewed for the best game-play experience. We went through dozens of iterations and finally settled upon a widescreen aspect ratio that best suited the gameplay experience.

-


- Elizabeth"

Interesting, ok, I'll go with that

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Originally posted by: MmmSkyscraper
Does anyone know if you can switch the damage indicator off for enemies? I have no idea why that's in there.

I'll answer my own question. There is a game options menu but it doesn't include this