PC Substance

[Dark Jaguar]

Well ABF, I've read up on a port of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance to PC. Since it seems it's the only way you will ever get to play it short of getting another current gen console, I highly suggest it. A few notes. It seems the min install size is about 3 gigs and the max install size is about 7 gigs. I mean, really, I'm getting sick of games that just won't use the swap file or get optimized so taking data from the disk is perfectly doable... Anyway, as a result of the massive size of the game, they are only releasing it on DVD. As far as I can remember, this is the first big name PC game that is ONLY on DVD, which is a good start anyway. Hopefully this will result in more DVD drive sales (they are less than the price of a game now), and that will result in more games made exclusivly on DVD on PC. I'm really getting sick of all the compression they are doing on CDs just to get it all on one disk (and often that's not enough). As far as I know, it has no exclusive extras compaired to the PS2 version of Substance though.

[OB1]

Yeah you should definitely get it. Just make sure to use your dual analogue controller. The PC and mouse setup is shite for MGS.

[Dark Jaguar]

Hopefully the buttons on his controller are also pressure sensitive. It's VERY helpful to be able to draw your weapon and then put it away without firing a shot, or have sensitivity in the shoulder buttons, and other such things. PC/Mouse would of course be bad, this isn't an FPS here.

[A Black Falcon]

I have a dual-analog (10 button, not 12 like a PSX pad) controller. Not pressure sensitive, but I've never seen a PC pad that is... I've seen some analog trigger paddles, but that's just buttons that replace a axis... I don't know if PCs have a way of doing analog buttons well, and anyway no games use it.

Plus, from what I remember of playing MGS2 I don't remember pressure mattering...

[OB1]

As DJ explained, it does.

[A Black Falcon]

But they could very easily adjust that so it didn't need analog buttons... it doesn't seem like it'd be too tough...

[Dark Jaguar]

Obviously it wasn't. They made the XBox version after all. However, I much prefer the precision of having the analog stuff. That's why I waited for the PS2 version of substance (that and I wanted it to see my MGS2_SOL save file, which by the way, it does NOT), even though as it turned out the PS2 version has a gameplay feature not even the XBox version has (the little skateboarding thing).

[A Black Falcon]

Oh, any links for this news? It'd be REALLY big to see a MAJOR game go DVD only... and it'd be great! I'd love to see that! I've been hoping for more DVD-exclusive (because if they're on both types and are the same most people will live with disk-switching or massive installs) games for a long time... its well past due that PC games try to catch up to the disk sizes used in console games...

Though why in the world if its on the DVD would it require to pretty much install the whole thing to the HDD as a minimum install? That makes no sense... can't it run off the disk? :( Three GIG minimum install? Ack!

[A Black Falcon]

http://www.gamers.com.my/title.cfm?id=577

Minimum requirements:
* Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
* Pentium III 800 MHz
* 128 MB of RAM
* 3.9 GB of free hard disk space
* DirectX 8.1 compatible video card with 32 MB of RAM
* DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
* 8X DVD-ROM drive

FOUR GIGS of HD space MINIMUM??? Wow! That's INSANE! Why? I mean... isn't it on that DVD so that you could install LESS to the HDD than you would have to if it was on like 6 or 7 CDs?

Edit: New info... its got a 3.8gb minimum install, 6.9gb medium, or 7.6gb full install... wow...

Plus, one other flaw: Currenly the game does not run playably on ATi cards, just NVidia ones... wow, that's one big flaw there... I have a NVidia one but lots of people have ATi and its not nice to do that...

[Dark Jaguar]

Just wait for the patch :D (I'm sick of patchware...), THEN it'll support ATI. I too have an ATI card, and in fact it's the accepted standard, so lack of support at launch is really stupid.

Yeah, I too must rant about how stupid it is to have such large install sizes these days. I fear that game install sizes will only grow larger. Remember, single CD games have massive install sizes too (around 500 MB to install sizes larger than 700, which weirdly enough goes beyond the maximum storage capacity of CDs, suggesting compression). It's really just stupid. Optimising the load times by loading straight off the disk is something PC developers really need to strive for, especially since we may just be entering the DVD era for PC games (depending on how well MGS2 for PC sells likely). Idealy, I'd like to see PC developers only putting game data on the HD via the virtual memory swap file (thus it would all be removed when the game is exited), and the only other data on the disk would be the launch executable (with icon and shortcut), the folders, and the registry info tellling where the game was installed. From then on, the only data being kept on the HD would be save data, patches, and custom maps and such. This is the ideal I think all games should go for. I have only a few games that are that nicely designed (The Dig for one, but that's quite old).

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah... when the PC market fully enters the DVD age will we suddenly see lots of games with 5 gig installs? That would show how inneficient and lazy the developers are... they could, if they want, compensate for the slight delays it takes to move data from the dvd to ram and run it almost all off the DVD but they're too lazy and put it on the harddisk... and with DVDs those install sizes will become insane. But the space is needed... I wish they'd get smart and not do this to us but that is extremely unlikely. :(

[Dark Jaguar]

Yeesh, with install sizes like that, think of how long it takes just to install it. Console game designers have had to deal with the limitations of the lack of a hard drive for a long time, and as we can see from the current gen games it hasn't reduced game quality at all. Since area size is limited by RAM anyway, no matter how large a hard drive one may have (that just increases spool speed, like in Halo when you reach an area not in RAM and it quick dumps it into RAM, pausing the game for 2 seconds) it won't help the speed. They really need to just learn how to optimize disk load speeds. The best way may be a nice standardized disk reading method for various speeds among disk drive developers (this is assuming of course the standard isn't already in place and developers really aren't being lazy) so developers can optimize disk reading regardless of the drive on the machine. One thing I've noticed is that minimum disk drive requirements are STILL at 4x CD-ROM. That REALLY shows the lack of any cares for disk speed optimizing in my mind. They should optimize based on some minimal speed, which should likely be around 32x, or higher, and if needed REQUIRE that. Anyone with a computer with all the latest hardware everywhere else should have no problem getting a cheap high speed CD-ROM / DVD-ROM drive. I don't except them to tap into the full power of any piece of hardware here, PCs being machines that tend to have vastly different hardware setups. I just except them to tap into ENOUGH of the high speed abilities of current CD/DVD drives that they can just spool most data from the disk to the RAM with little to no noticable load time. If they can't do that for all the data, again, that's what virtual memory is for!