Porting console games to PC?

[Hellser]

What a load of shit. Who doesn't like making more money from old products? EA actually said that? For real?

We're talking about EA here. They aren't exactly known for revisiting / remastering their old games. Just make new games with existing names.

[Kinsie]

EA actually said that? For real?

No, I hacked into IGN and Gamespot and created fake articles and a fake hour-long video interview I put together in After Effects purely to mislead you. I'm sorry.

[The Zombie Killer]

There are cases where porting a console game to PC is a lot less difficult than one would expect.
If a game was made in Game Maker: Studio (without using YYC), the data files are generally going to work across platforms, but you may need to make changes to the script bytecode to account for things like controls.

If a game was made in Unity, the process is actually pretty simple. You need to change the platform target of all .assets files (pretty simple to do in a hex editor, although I wrote a program to do it), and then hook/modify the managed assemblies to handle things like controls, resource replacements, etc. You also often need to replace shaders in the .assets files with platform-compatible equivalents, same goes for audio files.

Once you've done all that, locate the exact version of Unity the game was built with (there's an archive on the Unity website, not hard), and rip the files for a standalone Windows build from the installer. From there you need to get the Mono files as well, and then move some files around to match the setup of a Windows Unity game. If you've done everything correctly, you will end up with a functioning PC port:


(Corpse Party: Blood Drive, a PS Vita game, running on Windows)

[Nevander]

EA actually said that? For real?

No, I hacked into IGN and Gamespot and created fake articles and a fake hour-long video interview I put together in After Effects purely to mislead you. I'm sorry.

Lmao I know, I was making a joke towards the fact that EA usually loves to get more money from you in some way, and turning down more profits from an already made game doesn't sound right from them. That's why I had a WUT moment reading that.

[wildweasel]

If you want a historical precedent, look at the PS3 version of Medal of Honor Frontline. It got poor reviews, if I remember, and worse sales. They probably don't see the point in trying again.

[Reisal]

It should be the other way around, never console to PC so all the assets do not need to be held back/reduced for the consoles.

[edward850]

It should be the other way around, never console to PC so all the assets do not need to be held back/reduced for the consoles.

Except that's the worst way to develop for consoles, as downscaling the resources isn't as simple as "just lowering the texture resolution". In fact in some cases texture resolution wasn't even the problem, most of it is pipeline bandwidth, which means your assets need to be designed around particular standards.

[Nevander]

Or better yet, every game should have its source code released after it reaches a certain age (to the point where profits from it are so low it makes hobos look rich). Games like Doom have its source code released (thank god that happened way back when) and are still sold strong on Steam today. Wish they'd stop dicking around and get Blood's source code out the door already. Blood seriously needs a legit source port.

[Kinsie]

Or better yet, every game should have its source code released after it reaches a certain age (to the point where profits from it are so low it makes hobos look rich). Games like Doom have its source code released (thank god that happened way back when) and are still sold strong on Steam today. Wish they'd stop dicking around and get Blood's source code out the door already. Blood seriously needs a legit source port.

This isn't something that can realistically happen for a number of reasons:

1.) Middleware. Many games contain code and other assets that were licensed from other companies, who still retain the copyright on their work. This is why you see a billion copyright notices for Speedtree, Fmod etc. when you load a modern game. Even Doom wasn't immune to this - the DMX Sound Library had to be stripped from the engine before the source code was released. Of course, that was just a sound library - many modern games use middleware to cover all sorts of things that are far more vital to the game's operation. This also disqualifies Literally Every Single Console Game, by the way, as they typically all include libraries provided by the console manufacturer.

2.) Preservation. Many studios are alarmingly bad at this, and its shockingly common for a studio's source archives for a game to be months before the final released version... if the code still exists at all. A particularly famous example of this is the Silent Hill HD Collection, which was based on a much older pre-final version of the code that had a lot of bugs and lacked many visual effects.

3.) Code Rot. Even where a studio has the final or near final code for a game, it's not uncommon for it to stop working or compiling when left alone for seven years or so. The reasons for this are many, but for the most part it involves simply no longer having access to the exact setup used to originally compile the code.

These are not unsolvable problems if and when they come up, but doing so typically involves pulling expensive programmers away from projects that actually bring in money so that you can keep paying people to do things, causing more problems than are being solved. Prevention is the best cure, of course, but for the games you want to have benefit from this, the horse has LONG since bolted.

[Nevander]

Sounds like the gaming industry is more screwed than I originally thought. I miss the old days when there were less rules about these sorts of things and the games were about the gamers. Doesn't help that these days we get a CoD re-hash every year. Seriously it's the same thing over and over and they keep doing it, but can't revisit older and better games. So much lame. I wish I was Kaiser, so I could reverse engineer a game myself. "If you want something done right, do it yourself."

[edward850]

It's actually better. Almost no code base from before 2000 can actually even compile, due to absolutely no quality control in their archives, assuming they even archived it. Version control and library/code standards was a very nuanced concept for game engines back then, and a lot of code was lost as a result.

While not a universal example, Doom3BFG's source code is a very good look at modern standards and just how much better things are now.

[Nevander]

Except if you made a game or mod using resources from wherever you wanted back in those days nobody cared. These days, so many rules. So many regulations. You can't do this, you can't do that. It should still be like that so that it's easier to just "do" things.

Using the purpose of the thread as an example, if I wanted a PC port of BLACK there should be a way to "start" it up. If I was EA's CEO right now so I could just snap my fingers and it happens. How do other petitions become so successful? How do kickstarter projects ever even get anywhere? It's bullshit. You could say that only a select few care about BLACK and it's probably unfortunately true, but the same can be said about some stupid invention that makes no sense to me, and yet it gets thousands upon thousands of signatures or dollars.

That's what sucks is only the people in power have any ability to make things happen. Us down here at the gamer's level have 0 power anymore. We are all trying to be steered in the direction THEY want us to go in, which is why I quit caring about new console games and new consoles period when CoD starting getting out of hand. I could see the pattern. They finally had a good idea and did a remaster of CoD4 (the best one since CoD1 IMO) but then you can't even buy it separate. It's like throwing food to a starving person, but it was thrown behind a gate that needs a key you can't get without giving up something.

Call me a whiner if you want (I know you will) but I just find it ridiculous how hard it is to get attention to something that you care about. Yea yea I know, tough shit. That's life. I get it. But I just wish there were more ways to outreach to developers and publishers, a way in which they can actually listen. The people making the games should care about them as much as the gamers do.

/nostalgia rant

[edward850]

Except if you made a game or mod using resources from wherever you wanted back in those days nobody cared. These days, so many rules. So many regulations. You can't do this, you can't do that. It should still be like that so that it's easier to just "do" things.

Said rules and regulations are the exact reason why code is now also more manageable. Professional programmers sell libraries, SDKs and toolsets to other professionals, which the money can be used to make even better professional tools. You seem to be complaining that the programming industry isn't exactly how you want it to be for an entertainment industry. Two extremely different things.

I'm not sure how you even turned this into a complaint about a CoD4 remaster not being released in an independent form, as that has nothing to do with rules and regulations, so I'm going to ignore that. And then there's that part about kickstart projects and petitions that doesn't actually have much to do with rules/regulations either, not directly.

[Nevander]

You seem to be complaining that the programming industry isn't exactly how you want it to be for an entertainment industry. Two extremely different things.

I would say this is true, yes. My complaints are geared more towards the inaccessibility of a game's code and the inability for developers to freely work with it. Keeping old games so locked up with no way to create source ports is annoying to say the least. I wonder how Night Dive is able to remaster so many old games. Why can't they do the same for a game like BLACK? I suppose they could try but good luck getting EA's permission. And we're at the root of the problem: permission. Ugh...

Would it be of any worth at all to show the petition to Night Dive? Plant any kind of seed at all? Problem then is how do I know if they saw it. They probably wouldn't bother to contact me back if they saw it or even care. If they see it and don't care that's fine but I just need to know if they do or don't.

[wildweasel]

I wonder how Night Dive is able to remaster so many old games.

Because Night Dive's entire business revolves around tracking down and acquiring rights and code to games whose developers are either inactive or closed. Electronic Arts is neither of these.