MarteenDee

I was checking most of them already. Haven't been fiddling with UDK much since, as I'm quite busy right now in RL. Problem with licensed UE3 is, that every new game can introduce special "protection" for .upk files which prevents them from opening/unpacking. So, every game build on licensed UE3 is having different header in .upk (you can check it via any hex editor). I've seen some info on upcoming patch, so there's hope that the most wanted fixes will be applied. For now - try .ini fixes posted in this and other threads. We'll see what we might achieve after the patch...

I don't think so. I use one of those tweaks to remove stutters but I had this problem on my first runthrough as well (where I hadn't changed the ini). It's textures clipping on low-lod models. Might have something to do with really low draw distance. You may try this: open your APEngine.ini and try to alter values to what I'm showing below: MinTextureDensity=1.0 if that doesn't help, move further down and try these: SkeletalMeshLODBias=-1 TEXTUREGROUP_PC_2048__X_2048__PS3_2048=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=2048,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_2048__X_2048__PS3_1024=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=2048,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_2048__X_2048__PS3_512=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=2048,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_2048__X_1024__PS3_1024=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=2048,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_2048__X_1024__PS3_512=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=2048,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_1024__X_1024__PS3_1024=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=1024,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_1024__X_1024__PS3_512=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=1024,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_1024__X_1024__PS3_256=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=1024,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_1024__X_512___PS3_512=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=1024,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_1024__X_512___PS3_256=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=1024,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_512___X_512___PS3_512=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=512,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_512___X_512___PS3_256=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=512,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_512___X_256___PS3_256=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=512,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_256___X_256___PS3_256=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=256,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_256___X_256___PS3_128=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=256,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_128___X_128___PS3_128=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=128,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_64____X_64____PS3_64=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=64,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) TEXTUREGROUP_PC_2048__X_32__PS3_32=(MinLODSize=1,MaxLODSize=2048,LODBias=-1,MinMagFilter=aniso,MipFilter=point) [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] MaxTranslucencyLayers=20 DisableShaderModel3=False DisableShadowVolumes=False DisableHWShadowMaps=False ShadowBufferResolution=2048 MaxShadowResolution=2048 MinShadowResolution=62 ShadowResolutionScale=1.0 Should help - I haven't yet observed any texture clipping (z-fighting) in my game. But it might be also some specific graphic card or drivers problem. What GFX guys and what drivers version? Thank you. I'm happy it's all working for you. Enjoy the game (and the forums).

Depends who you call fanboy, though. Seeing flaws and pointing them out differs from stating game features as "flaws" and repeating your point of view 300 times just to defend it. AP isn't a perfect game (and haven't seen perfect game yet) but trying to turn RPG into shooter isn't the way to improve it. But stripping it from stat driven gameplay removes "tactical" approach of balancing your gameplay - which would turn the game into another shooter, but with some rich story. I don't play RPGs because of their sophisticated story, and I neither play shooters because they lack one. I play RPGs because they force me to use different mindset instead of only point and shoot. Using AP as an example - it forces me to think: should I spent some points to improve my AR accuracy or should I spent them to improve my sneaking talents. With RPG mechanics removed from shooting/sneaking what choice would I have? If I don't want to think about character development and just utilise my aiming skills as a player - I'm playing match or two in CoD4. If I'm going for realistic warfare/gun play - I'm playing ArmA2, if I wish to think more and make some gameplay choices (should I improve my aim instead of hacking) - I'm playing Alpha Protocol. Introducing changes proposed by Dan would be like making Conviction with rich story, thus it would strip AP from "tactical character development" part. I wonder if he's complaining over at Splinter Cell boards about making story more complicated and multi layered as in AP. That would make more sense IMHO. Difference between shooter and RPG isn't about story but about mindset and character development . Which seems to be forgotten in this discussion.

Same here.

And still they're getting tons of bashing for weapons being inaccurate, crippled AI, and all that bullcrap casual gamers (and unfortunately huge part of gaming journalists are casuals imho- it doesn't matter how many games you play in a week but how you play them) are complaining and whining about. OPF: Dragon Rising wanted to please both audiences and failed badly on both fronts (pun not intended). You can't make both of these worlds happy. Casual is all about visuals, fancy cinematic and shortest and least engaging gameplay possible - to have a chance of finishing borrowed game during a weekend. Interactive entertainment at its best. Hardcore gaming is about mechanics, involvement, immersion and spending on a game 80+, posting on forums to death as a break... -------------------------- *me = huge ArmA fan

I don't know, Nepenthe, but Bulletstorm looks dumb and fun. And since it's from the Painkiller devs (People Can Fly), it's totally expected. Agree. What's more - dumb games are needed to draw idiots away from complaining on intelligent games forums.

Depends if "broad appeal" and pleasing the group which isn't the "main customers target" for the game is a good thing. I think not - but it's only my personal opinion - and I'm well aware that it doesn't pair with "commercial success". Look what happened with ME2, CoD series, Splinter Cell, Deus Ex 2 etc. All these "established" titles started changing to be understood by the wider audience than they had. To get out of the boundaries of "hardcore gamers ghetto". Sure, from financial point of view it's a good thing, but if that happens to be the only aim for making games - watching sales rankings bars rise - we're going to end up playing dumbed down, 6-hours-to-complete, Wii sport simulators for casual players... Sure - there's room for improvement. But - in all honesty - were AP mechanics so frustrating? For casual player expecting to be lead by the hand from one point to another - sure they were. For hardcore player, who understood right away that it's something different than, ie. Splinter Cell? Not really.

It is a quality production. On its own rights. You got what you've paid for - an espionage RPG, with rich story, levelling, multiple character builds, good voice acting, interesting mechanics. More? Yes, there are some slight glitches which should be definitely ironed out in upcoming patch - but show me a single piece of software released without any bugs... Oh.. Unless you wanted to eat bananas but by mistake you bought some apples. But then it's your fault and it has nothing to do with apples quality, neither the orchard owner's lack of knowledge or talent.

Yeah, but it all melts down to agreements between developers and distributors. And, especially with Activision and SEGA - list of don't and do's is pretty long afaik. Whatever you might say - for now only EA introduced more freedom in how developers want to manage their contacts with community - hence so many responses from devs in DA:O forums. Thanks goes to Joseph for showing us, that at least some members of Obsidian are reading these forums. I hope we get official response from both SEGA and Obsidian soon.

Answer to your problems is quite simple, Dan. Don't like it? - don't play it. Knowing so much about game design and what should done to be right, what's the best and where's the truth about perfect game experience you shouldn't be wasting your time on these forums. You know what? I have an idea: you should be designing your own game! There's even full engine waiting for you to use! So download your copy of Unreal Development Kit - it's easy to use, ready for your brilliant and ground breaking ideas to became truth! Ah - and don't forget to inform us how is it going and give us some demo to try. I bet, with such deep knowledge about how everything should be done your game is going to be a full blown success, no question about that. ...Ah...unless you're one of those useless malcontent, who can't do anything on their own - just whine that people more talented than you couldn't make something which would suit your sophisticated taste...

Nice find Tigranes! It's good you confirmed it working. BTW: do you think we could get some sub-forum for mod related subjects only? As I think it might be worth it in long run. Just an idea, anyway. @Zoraptor after thinking about gear prices... There's a lot of "DefaultValue" and "BlackmarketValue" along with some modifiers all over the place. I'm considering changing those (or taking your "nuke from the orbit" method) and starting new game to see is there any direct link or they're obsolete/archive files. Maybe there's a chance that they're somehow compiled into binary packs (saves or whatever) after you choose difficulty? Since there are no different "profiles" for each gameplay that might be it... Worth try.

If I would want to play Splinter Cell - I would play it. And not Alpha Protocol. What's wrong with gameplay being similar to whatever? Lack of creativity. And creativity is some really rare gem in gaming industry these days. That's why I prefer games being innovative over clones of the same old sh**t. Game creation is an art, in case you don't know that, and like every art - should evolve and search for different routes of expression... (unless you still want to play Pong as a "only real" action game, or Wastelands as "only real" RPG) As I said - this reasoning leads to stagnation. If everybody would think like you do we would be still playing text based RPGs. Giving another example - is "Vampire -The Masquerade" less of an RPG than "AD&D 2nd Edition" just because in former you have dots and accent put on playing your role, instead of numerical stats and dice roll for every action? You should start thinking more out of the box you've put yourself in, Dan. And get out that cave. The truth is out there...

Not really if those would be "fast fire rate - cheap ammo" option. Depends on balancing stuff, really.

I was checking upk files too. What I think, there's a lot of unused files - probably leftovers or backup stuff from development process. Files which are used for 100% are the ones stated in APEngine.ini. There's a list of caching priority (called cooking in Unreal Engine for some reason). Now - if something is in ini file (like equipment stats for example), there have to be an unique name for it, and cross reference in packed files. That's the key I'm using for searching stuff - but it takes a tad longer than two minutes, though. The best thing would be if some gifted programmers from the community would take their time to "crack" the way all packages are protected. I'm neither gifted nor programmer - sorry.

It's not "for some reason". It's the way how your brain try to approach the problem. With your eyes wide open your brain is trying to match fast changing numbers to the code you want to find. When you "blur" your eyes - instead of infinite code matches - brain is only trying to find darker spots in the pattern. It's how you reduce amount of "data" available for your "processor" to calculate "variables"...

Totally agree. -------------------- On the side note - OP's post was one of the most constructive critics I've seen lately. Nice reading. I hope we get some nice patch soon fixing all the minor (but not unimportant) flaws we encounter.

Cool stuff. Nice you've made it for those "hate-crappy-weapons" complainers. And apologies for initial misunderstanding. I think problems with the timers must be in your trainer though (BTW - it's not against EULA to use trainers, you know?). It have to leave some trace of its activity in profile or binary section - probably during autosave. I hope this helps somehow. Take care!

Well... If you're changing values in hex editor and there's no crash whatsoever it should be fine. Unpacking/repacking would gave as direct access to any files through either UDK or any text editor (depends what kind of files we would like to alter). With that we could exactly know what we're altering and how it's used. True, there's many factors for final equipment price - perks, missions, difficulty settings, level of friendship with certain characters, intel. Either way - if you set any number (is it basic weapon price or modifier) you should sooner or later see the difference. What at least unpacking would gave as - knowledge which values are which so we could alter them (even in hex editor) without all the guesswork. Good luck man, I really hope that we can build some great mod community here - as Obsidian's games are worth it.

Clearly, you don't know anything about modding, mate... Look what we did for STALKER here. @Zoraptor If you found exact values in packages with hex editor you can try to change them. If game don't crash it means that the game doesn't check hash value when loading packages. If the values in game change - we're there. You don't need to unpack/repack stuff for hex editing... Tigranes Yeah, there's not maybe a *huge* difference, but clearly there is. Especially in shadows and texture sharpness. It's hard to say if some values are working without trying any exaggerated values. HardModePawnDamageIncrease=0.50 is working for sure for Hard Difficulty. @Starwars and WorstUsernameEver I know but imho without opening models we can't do much about it. It's texture clipping issue on low lod models... Only thing you can try is to force game to use high lod models/textures in the distance = more processing power needed. I'm also not sure if it's possible for cinematic. When I'll get to that part in game again I will fiddle with it and see is there's anything we can do. @Obsidian Help us to help you. We need some hints from devs for modding.

Screenshot would be the best here to depict your problem. I can't even imagine what might mean "messed up". My only thought is that if you're talking about long shots it might be poor mipmap quality or shimmering caused by too high texture resolution... Or - if you tried mine or some other fixes - you could set up lowest mipmap level too high and engine isn't rendering textures properly. In other words - screenshot please (if F9 isn't working during cutscenes use printscreen key on your keyboard) - and we can help you more precisely. LOL - change DefaultGravityZ=-750.0 to -100 for example and start throwing nades :D

True. Way to mod that would be handy - not for "cheating" purposes, but more for balancing and making things more realistic. Same with weapons prices - which are quite ridiculous sometimes (like clip of tranquilliser ammo, which costs more than basic pistol on hard = LOL) Anyway - another bunch of my changes, from APGame.ini this time (fixes animations by matching moving speed to them, also some more gore and reduced interaction distance, fixes keyboard behaviour during mini games too, but makes overall difficulty slightly higher) : InteractDistance=64 DecalLifeSpan=60.0 MaxActiveDecals=100 ScaleRate=40 ScaleThreshold=90 BloodSplatter_RegularDecalNumber_Min=3 BloodSplatter_RegularDecalNumber_Max=6 BloodSplatter_SlidingDecalNumber_Min=3 BloodSplatter_SlidingDecalNumber_Max=6 BloodSplatter_DecalRadius_Min=30.f BloodSplatter_DecalRadius_Max=40.f BloodSplatter_DecalSpreadRadius=5.f NadeTrajectoryPreviewWidth=2.f CoverWalkSpeed=50.f CoverRunSpeed=100.f bUsePhysicalAnimations=TRUE AwarenessCooldownDelay=3.f NearFarSight_Ratio=0.5f HardModePawnDamageIncrease=0.50; HardModeBossDamageIncrease=0.00; PlayerRotationSpeed=80000.0f CameraShakeMagnitudeLostEndurance=240.f MoveSpeedNormal=155 MoveSpeedScoped=75 SprintSpeed=255 CoverMoveSpeed=100.f InputHeldThreshold=0.0f InputPressedThreshold=0.0f CloseToMikeDistance=50.f

BAA visual excellency comes from superior texturing artists, proper use of lighting (level design) and probably some shader tweaks. It has nothing to do with engine itself. AP isn't lacking anything in what was mentioned about other games using Unreal Engine. It's the engine and also consoles processing capabilities which gets old. Having said that - AP is visually on par with other games using UE3, and - what's most important - is quite consistent in the way it depicts the game world. Mike VS Jizan Weapons Stockpile:

Yeah - that's what I've said man - too many variables. Judging from your story it could be mainboard (unplugging everything helped to cut power completely thus temporarily fixing the problem), memory error (as previously), malware issue (if it just activates randomly you can't say for sure if cutting off the power helps to fix it), not enough powering (problem shows up when tasks are getting more power intensive), overheating (time you spent on unplugging stuff and plugging it back was enough for components to cool down) and many more I can't think of now... Proposed steps to follow: - update all your drivers, and not only GFX; - clean your system with some commonly accessible anti-malware software (CCleaner, Combofix and Registry Repair Wizard would be my tools of choice); - measure temperatures of all your components (GFX,RAM,processor) with proper software; - if they're above 60-70C mark - clean your PC interiors, check if all fans are running, provide better air circulation for your PC; If problem persists think about reinstalling your system, buying better power supply or graphic card. These would be most universal advices - despite of your hardware configuration. Good luck!

True - it's just that most of those cheap laptops on the market have many bottlenecks when it comes to gaming (like pretty powerful processing power but crappy GFX etc). Also - many mobile versions of chipsets have slightly lower capabilities than their desktop equivalents. Add to it overheating and powering issues - very common, when people don't know how to handle their laptops properly - and you have your answer. Besides - logic behind such complaints is wrong. If the guy said "I'm getting such and such score in 3DMark on my laptop and still the game runs crappy" - yeah, that would be some viable opinion against game optimisation. Hell - most laptops have better hardware capabilities than X-Box (amount of memory pool as an example)? Short answer: something greatly hogs OP's system if for him AP runs worst than bad.

ya i might try cleaning out my graphics card and seeing if that works.but by shutting down do you mean shutting down but you can turn it back on again.because i dont think this was alpha protocol that did that but with a previous game when i shut my computer off it actually wouldnt turn back on again Sounds like some bad hardware problem, dude. Updating drivers is always important, when you want to play some new games on the market. Also it sounds like some serious overheating or, more likely, problem with power supply. Maybe some faulty overclocking attempt? Or maybe some malware issues? AFAIK one of the available NoCD might cause similar sensations too. Too many variables and not enough data available to accurately pinpoint your problem. One thing is sure, though - it's some fault on your end, mate.