This entire QA forgot to mention one of the biggest problems people who bought (and specifically preloaded the game) from steam have had, and some ongoing problems as well, under xp and moreso under Vista.
Bioshock.exe has stopped working is a message Vista has given me about 60 times this last week, and to many users as well, and you have to admit, when you have bioshock, a game you've waited two years for, sitting on your hardrive, and all it does when you double click it is give a irreversible error? Almost anyone who preloaded the game through steam had that problem, garanteed, and it was some time until people figured out they had to download this obscure .ini patcher from a third party downloader site to rectify the situation, among other things, anyway.
Thats not all, people with dx10 hardware have been having problems running the game with high shaders and are forced to turn those off to even get into the game.
I myself have come across a game-ending, desk-bashing, keyboard annihilating problem that no one else seems to have.
I have Vista, 8800GTX, e6600 and 3gb of ram, and i was running the game fine for a long while unitl two days ago my game wouldnt load any savegame. After a reboot, the game itself wouldn't work. After a long redownload and reinstall, the same thing happened, and if i ever got the slightest chance of getting into the game menu and click on any of my saves, I'd be greeted with a blank loading screen and the ambiant loading music, forever. After two days of cursing at my monitor, I figured for some odd reason if I played the game fullscreen, this is what would happen, and I now force myself to play in windowed mode, basically killing the entire ambiance and atmosphere I was looking for and interested in, in the first place. These two technical problems have had me boot the game more than 50 to 60 times (accurate), most of the time uselessly loading the absurdely long intros just to get the blank loading screen, or to be greeted to a nice atuo alt-tab feature Vista has, which alt tabs my game from fullscreen, giving me a blank windowed bioshock screen that I'm forced to CTRALTLDEL.
I won't even go into the random crashes......I haven't been able to voluntarily close a session of Bioshock yet, seriously, and I've been playing since launch. Everyday I finish my short Bioshock gaming session with a nice crash to desktop, realising my last save was a mile and four big daddys away, and I basically toss the controller to the ground and go play the world in conflict demo which works perfectly under Vista.
Ah yes, the controller, why use the controller on a pc fps? Because someone under Ken Levine's leadership had the smart idea to break away from the group, be different and original, and NOT include a walk function on the keyboard for the atmosphere-ridden game, forcing me to use the controller, and the xbox360 interface, just to be able to walk and creep around the levels, basically throwing all that pc-exclusive inteface out the window. And of course using the controller introduces its own slew of problems like advanced pc graphics settings not being saved and the whole menu switching to the xbox360 version.
Anyway I can go on and on, with say the directional and overlayed sound channels in the game, but I'll stop there.
I understand this is partly my 'fault' for running Vista, but give me a break, if running a goddamn Vista OS still a problem, I have no idea where pc gaming is going to go.
The game itself IS amazing (when I get to play it), Ken Levine is God, but the technical problems, I'm sorry to say, are the worst I've seen for any game launch.

Okay, I love this game, I love Ken Levine and his team (system shock2, Freedom Force), this is not an attack in any way, I'm just venting out my frustration with this game's technical issues and aspects.

I've gotten the game through Steam, and my rig specs are e6600, 3gb ram ddr2 800, 8800gtx, Dell 2007WFP, and........vista.

Everyday Ive played bioshock (and thats since launch day) ive never had the game close normally on me or from my own will, it always crashes or blank-screens, or even alt tabs out and thats how i end my session. And of course when i get back in all my settings are defaulted since ive never been able to save my settings and have the game close.

The crashing occurs at random, but mostly when I'm loading from one area to another (the pressure doors, bathyspheres) where the game alt tabs out and all i can do is ctrlaltdel.

At my gaming rate, I wouldve finished the game by now, so I'm partly thankful for all the crashes, which is allowing a longer gaming experience with a game ive waiting 2 years for. They should include this feature in every Single player game, I won't unconsciously blaze through the game in one sitting.

Another thing that pisses me off are the keyboard controls, which obviously suffer post-x360 developement. This is the first FPS I can recall, ever, that does not have any walk function or toggle key. What?!?! Games that don't need a walk function include that, but not bioshock? I beleive that basically being forced to run through the levels, especially in BioShock, ruins all the atmosphere, and thats why I use my xbox360 controller to play the game, where the pressure sensitive joystick can allow me to tiptoe and slowly creep through the levels. the rumble also helps.

(Usually I'm the first person to say xbox controllers=FAIL for fps, but in this case, I am forced to use it, and I'm enjoying it)

Anyway, thats part of the problem with the controller. The other thing is, when I enable the controller, I am greeted with what is eccentially the xbox360 menu, which includes very basic audio and video options that are meant for my xbox 360. Gone are the advanced video options, including the dx10 video option toggle. Does this mean, when i simply want to use my controller, I'm forced out of having advanced graphics and dx10 features? and that I'm basically running xbox360's version of the game under dx9?? just because I dont want to run in the game??

Just while writing this i tested my game again and pressed "Continue", which is where I was greeted with a blank screen and repeating sound, which again forced me to alttab out and end the process.

I'm honestly trying to enjoy the game with my upgraded shotgun and exploding buckshots to the face, but seriously, let me play the damn game please.

If a high end pc is having problems with this game, what are the midrange and low end pc users experiencing??!!

UPDATE:: After writting this i felt like playing some bioshock, got into the menu and tried Continue, didnt work. tried again by loading a specific save game, didnt work. Rebooted shortly after and ran the game, the entire game didnt work.

So i deleted it and im redownloading/reinstalling it.

so i made it in ubisoft and i was surprised how quickly I got on my first project, called NDA . Im working on the NDA engine in conjunction with NDA, and I can now say that this NDA is going to OWN. Having a blast texturing and modeling for the NDA engine, its certainly light years ahead of what I had to do while working on the Source engine. Not only is the NDA engine amazing, but the way UbiM has all their NDAs linked to each other and working flaswlessly and seamlessly is..seriously..jawdropping. Ive never seen such good workflow, for example, my workflow is simply modeling my mesh in NDA, then exporting it to NDA. Then for textures i use NDA, and all the layers are ALREADY assimilated by the NDA engine, so all i have to do to update a shader in the NDA engine for example, is to simply resave the work i did in NDA, and it automatically updates in NDA ! thats amazing!

*EDITED: Brendan Sinclair OWNS"

The only non NDA thing i can say is the studio is like a gigantic maze, and that maze is comprized of 5 huge floors with a couple projects on each floor, for example on my floor theres NDA, NDA , NDA , NDA and NDA. Anyway my point is, with a huge maze like that, its really annoying to have a metal security swivel door every 5 goddamn feet! everytime i need to go to the bathroom for example, i have to go through 3 security checkpoints and present my card at each. its annoying but ill get used to it, plus it makes me feel important so its cool.

Anyway, ill meet you on the other side once my NDA gets publicly announced, i guess ill be able to talk more.

Until then, happy NDA

Finally, after a year of studying and working at the Ubisoft Campus in Montreal, I got my long awaited break and I am heading over to the Ubisoft Montreal studios to work on a project I can't talk about.

To anyone here who is curious in trying out the Campus:

 

-You need to be fluent in French, and even more than that, you need to understand and decrypt Quebeker's "special french", which may sound like some alien trying to talk with its mouth full.

-You need to of course have good skills in drawing and modeling if you want to enter the modeling branch, good 2d/3d animation skills for the animation branch, and good level design skill for..well.. you guessed it.

The first semester introduces you to all the artistic and level design basics, so whether you are a modeler, animator or level designer, you will get a taste of each branch with assignments and exams.

The second semester focuses completely on your domain, I am not totally sure what the other branches do, but as a modeler we learnt everything relating to 3dmodeling and the programs such as 3dmax and zbrush in depth, and are given half the semester to fully construct and render a CGI scene (single frame).

The third semester is a choice between a training session with various companies, or to stay in the campus and make a game from scratch, you are only given the engine. (In our case we used the HL2 source engine). All 90 students work to deliver a game-ready and beautiful total-conversion with the source engine, in an unbelievably short amount of time (10-13 weeks)

All branches will learn how to work with their skills in the project environment, as well as adapt to using different exporting tools and level creation tools. Furthermore, it is imperative to learn how to use Perforce, an information sharing program which creates the folders for the game for everyone to access, and lets people submit, modify and share their work, live, without any conflict, between the 70-80 students on the project. Perforce may seem daunting at first but is essential to creating a game in a professional environment.

Finally the last two weeks (yeah right, at that time everyones still rushing on the game) are meant for portfolio production to be ready to be shown to various gaming companies who visit the campus, such as EA montreal, Ubisoft montreal/quebec, beenox/activision, a2m, recently installed Eidos Montreal, and others... This is where kissing ass begins.

Personally, I didnt have a problem and got the call from Ubisoft Montreal shortly after the interviews and their visit to the campus.

Again, anyone who's wiling to give it a shot, make sure you know some french. you cant pass without knowing some of it and being able to write it. (the ubisoft campus was created with the help of the government, and being in quebec, they really want you to know your french). However, once in the company, french isnt a must, as 1/3 of workers are a mix of americans, brits and others. Also be ready to party alot, Ubisoft loves to set up parties.

I start on June 4th along with some of my buds from the campus, on various tripleA projects we can't mention yet.

Anyway, have fun, play alot, and watch the credits :D !!!

Site URL: www.warclan.net
Our headquarters is mainly comprised of an irc channel and the website, along with other usual clan-meeting programs such as TeamSpeak etc.

Our channel is on the Mirc EnterTheGame server, called #warclan

We mostly just screw around and chat, and we play CSS, BF2, BF2SF, and we will be playing Quake Wars when it comes out.


If you wish to know more, or join the clan, post in our forums, or pm me for more info gr8greg77@hotmail.com (msn)

18+ only please

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my deviantart page is warxsnake.deviantart.com

not adding too much stuff these days because the ubisoft campus takes up 100% of my 3d time