Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[miauw62]

Can confirm. Started my computer in the morning, went downstairs to get breakfast, computer was installing windows ten when I got back.

[aristabulus]

Hearing about stuff like this makes me soooooo glad I went manual-only a long time ago, but for completely different reasons.   The auto-updater was set to "notify only, not DL or install" but still sucking up a whole core's runtime for hours on end, and not accomplishing anything... so I killed it.  Dialed back my update settings, disabled everything relevant in scheduled tasks, and I run update manually when it is convenient for me to do so.

I'm gonna clone my boot drive, then give that GWX thing a spin.  Some of the comments in a recent Slashdot Win10 thread suggest the derpy auto-updater may have finally been fixed.  *fingers-crossed*

[Sensei]

-So there's some other dumb stuff about UWP
Not exactly "news", but this Eurogamer article on the PC version of Gears of War Ultimate highlighted a couple issues I didn't know about with UWP and the Windows Store. First is that apparently Windows Store installations break if your computer shuts down while it's downloading a game, unlike Steam/Origin/Uplay/everything else. Ironically, this happened because of a scheduled Windows Update automatically shutting the computer down while the Eurogamer team's copy was downloading overnight. They couldn't fix it without manually deleting the files that had already been downloaded, which was made more difficult because UWP app folders are locked down and you have to jump through hoops to get control of them. So, that's like three separate foot-shootings coming together at once there. They also noted that the game was rather difficult to run on a powerful computer, despite being smooth on the Xbox One. That's annoying on its own, but there is a built-in 30FPS cap option to mitigate this. However, this FPS lock does not work as well as the console version, causing frame pacing to be all over the place and inducing stutter. Of course, they couldn't lock the framerate down using the many other tools outside the game for doing that because UWP prevents this. For an added bonus, although it's more game-specific than UWP, split-screen is of course gone and their options menu got "stuck" after a reinstall, refusing to save any changes, which is made worse because there's no ini to edit.

-UWP fixes soon?
Vsync, G-sync and some other stuff is still coming to UWP soon, according to Microsoft.

This should also fix Freesync and G-Sync not working in UWP applications; more info on this particular matter will be discussed at Build in a couple weeks.

So, it's been three weeks so far, and it'll be at least a couple more, but it's something. I wonder whether these changes will come soon enough for Quantum Break to benefit from them. I'm keeping my eye on that game, as it will be the first new AAA game to be UWP/WinStore exclusive. Its state on release will be more telling of the future of the platform, unlike Gears where some of the issues may be a result of the fact that it was originally designed for the Xbox 360.

[Aklyon]

So not only is it a downgrade from non-microsoft downloading that can be broken by other built-in features of the same os that cannot be stopped from happening, its a rubbish port that you can't fix via ini files, and you are actively denied from fixing it through third-party means just due to the existence of UWP itself.

Is Microsoft trying to make Big Rigs Over the road racing look like a good program, or are they just being even more stupid than people thought?

[nenjin]

They're hoping one developer successfully making a game that somewhat approaches PC consumer standards will magically convince the rest of the development world to sign away control over fucking everything to UWP.

[Aklyon]

They're hoping one developer successfully making a game that somewhat approaches PC consumer standards will magically convince the rest of the development world to sign away control over fucking everything to UWP.

Does MS own the Quantum Break devs, or are they hoping they'll just survive the launch long enough for that convincing to appear out of thin air and dreams? i kinda feel bad for those guys if this goes like how that win8-exclusive game went...

[nenjin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedy_Entertainment

I doubt they own them. Interestingly Remedy Entertainment formed Futuremark, and we all know who those guys are.

My guess is the relationship between MS and Remedy is like most developer/publisher relationships. MS really wants a flagship product to represent UWP capabilities. They probably approached these guys and said "hey, why don't you develop under UWP. We'll give you technical support out the whazoo to ensure it happens."

The hope being that a big success and a developer proselytizing the format (and MS's support of it) will bring on other developers to plant their games in the walled garden.

[Aklyon]

The walled and spontaneously combusting garden.

[Sensei]

So, here's some news regarding UWP:

-Phil Spencer details UWP improvement goals, limitations
A couple days ago Microsoft explained in detail how they planned to improve UWP for PC games. This includes fixing Vsync-off, G-Sync and Freesync. He also demonstrated that there would be a means to quickly convert a Win32 executable to a UWP app. Another major promise was that mods would be available, but they later clarified that this would mean only that developers would be able to specify ways in which mods would be able to interact with the game. Needless to say a lot of people are unsatisfied, under this policy mods like Scripthook for GTAV, or DSFix for Dark Souls, or any number of other mods which fix broken and lazy ports, wouldn't exist.

[Aklyon]

Oh fun, you can convert anything to a uwp app but you can't do anything good with them still! Minimal progress attained, microsoft.

[Sensei]

-Quantum Break for PC runs like ass
I predicted we'd see a few games fall casualty to UWP, and it looks like Quantum Break is the first new, AAA, non-remake game to be UWP exclusive on PC. Does it run terribly? Yes, yes it does. SLI doesn't work, GSync doesn't work, DSR downsampling doesn't work, and it gets poor framerates on insanely powerful hardware at 1080p ultra. As an added bonus, it's carried over blurry textures and bad anti-aliasing from the Xbox. There's bad pop-in and apparently it runs terribly on more normal hardware.