Volition returns to in-house PC development

@CrackRabbit Any mention of Volition will always bring Freespace comments. Rock on! FS3!!

@arkweld I thought it was pretty good, what problems did you have with it?

@Excessive

well let's see ...

5.1 audio broken
bad controls that sped up or slowed down depending on what your were operating
frequent crashes because it didn't support Windows 7
game running at twice normal speed because it didn't support Windows 7
ATI crashes
slowdowns (even on my beefy kit)
server login issues

It took 8 months to patch all that out and some issues like no 5.1 surround and not running correctly on Windows 7 were a joke. I can't think of a PC game that hasn't shipped with 5.1 in the last five years and not supporting an operating system that had been in public beta for almost a year? Pathetic.

@arkweld The company was Reactor Zero and I believe it has a connection to Volition because it was run by a group from Outrage Entertainment. Back in the days of Descent, Volition and Outrage were the same company: Parallax. Then they split up. Outrage made Descent 3 and Alter Echo, then was shuttered by THQ while Volition continued on.

@arkweld well that might explain it, I didn't play it until I got it on a Steam sale, so all the problems were probably fixed by then

@gLitterbug I had some of the same problems with Guerilla on PC last year, every time a building was about to collapse, the fps would slow down to a crawl. I know my 9800GT is getting a little old, but it shouldn't have been that bad.

@gLitterbug @Cranky Penguin

The game really isn't graphically intensive but rather processor intensive due to the physics. I had a min spec CPU but with a video card that was pretty good at the time (Radeon 4870). Obviously, whenever something wasn't blowing up or falling apart, the game ran great. Knock down a tower, it becomes a slide show. I still enjoyed the game though.

What CPU did you guys run the game with?

@(Unverified)
I know it's heavy on the physics, but it's certainly not a CPU problem. After my first graphics card change the game suddenly ran perfectly fine, even when I brought down big stuff. Then after doing a fresh install on the same hardware, it got stutters that were not fps or physics related. I'd get them in certain missions, before even bringing anything down the game would crawl. Or when I would drive a car it would suddenly halt in random intervals.

I've started to read forums and google up the problems when they hit me and what you find there, is an amazing amount of different "solutions" to the same problem. From changing some Windows compatiblity settings to the most ridiculous small changes that suddenly fixed the game for some people. Sadly nothing of those really worked for me and I stopped playing shortly before getting done with the game. Made me wish I postponed my reinstall just by a day to finish up the game in peace first.

Either way, not being able to play a game you really enjoy a lot and no solution to find makes you anything but eager to get a sequel. No matter how much they promise that things will be different now. So I'll wait and see.

@fco:

It has serious framerate issues no matter how beefy your PC is. This especially becomes apparent when there are weather effects such as rain and/or when you're driving between different sections of the city (this made the love escort missions a total nightmare for me). It's a great game alright but almost completely ruined by technical/performance problems. A HUGE shame. Pick it up if PC is your only option and if you just want to experience it but like it said above, the Xbox 360 version runs MUCH better whereas is this is a perfect example of a "shoddy console port" and Red Faction Guerrilla is just as bad. At least Volition has learned their lesson now in terms of NOT passing the buck to another studio that doesn't even know what they're doing.

On a side note, I really wanted to try this is stereoscopic 3D as it looks so much better but that's just never going to happen with such poor framerates (3D makes it run like a slidehow).