Exactly how terrible is this on the PC?

By that I mean I got one of those 360 controller for Windows packs for Christmas so now I have a wireless receiver and have a controller on my PC now and the PC version with the DLC is only $5 more expensive than the DLC on the PS3 and the PS3's network infrastructure is about as good as a retarded guy with multiple sclerosis attempting to draw a landscape on an etch-a-sketch and so having it on the PC means I could actually use the multiplayer.


I've heard it's literally the worst port job ever and requires mod tinkering to make it even vaguely functional as a PC title. Should I buy this if:

-I'm playing it on a relatively new gaming laptop. Can it hold a steady (at least) 30 FPS in (at least) 720p on a not brand freakin new computer?

-The laptop is hooked up to a TV via HDMI. I've heard it gets pouty about multiple monitors and fucks up.

-I'm going to install it to a secondary hard drive. I've heard it gets jealous of the other drive and crashes/refuses to run.

-I want it to look and perform better than the PS3 version -- no Blight Town slideshows, sharper textures, AA, etc.

-I don't want to spend a Morrowind-with-over-10-mods amount of time setting everything up to fulfill the above requirements.

Yeah.

The people you've heard this from are saps. It's an excellent port if you don't have a ridiculous grudge against using a controller. Even on my decidedly non-gaming laptop with onboard graphics it's identical to the console versions. On a machine with actual gaming hardware it looks gorgeous. Yes, it requires a mod that takes thirty seconds to install. Not a big deal.

a++++++++ great reply would like again!!!!!!

One mod, DSFix. Two files, a dll and a ini. Three settings* in that ini file. That's it!

*YMMV on that one.

Oh christ this uses GFWL.

Also the DSFix had problems with Optimus (my laptop uses this) but is reportedly fixed in the latest version. Is there anyone out there using Optimus that can confirm this?

I'm not even using DSFix (the game crashes when I try, regardless of settings, seemingly). I'm running it in a 720p window and letting NVidia handle the AA and AS filtering. It looks freaking amazing and is running like a dream so far. My only regret is not having access to my NG+ save from the PS3.

I've been in IT for 15 years and I spent an hour last night getting Dark Souls finally working on my PC. So calling this an excellent port is laughably wrong.

1) install via Steam, load game. GfWL hangs at signing in. And hangs, and hangs. Look online, find solution that requires uninstalling and reinstalling and patching and copying a .dll to system32. FYI: I later discover GfWL no longer works in Batman, so no playing that game until I get that fixed.

2) Finally load game. My wired 360 controller isn't working, though it works just fine in Batman: AC. Research online that I need to uninstall/reinstall its drivers. One reboot later this is done and Dark Souls now recognizes my controller.

3) Load game. Game looks like total ass. D/l and edit DSfix, reload game, still looks like ass. Make a few more changes to DSfix's .ini file, game looks slightly better but still pretty crappy on my 30" display. Need to do more research to make it look better, either force centered timings via the NV CP or use higher resolution.

4) Create character, I see my jail cell and my view is spinning around and around my toon. Exit game, check default controller settings. Those are fine, default is my 360 controller. Load game, still spinning me round and round. Exit game, disconnect my pedals and CH flight stick from my PC. Load game, no more spinning. Will need to remember to re-connect those two before next launching Rise of Flight.

So at the end of this less-than-fun exercise in getting Dark Souls to run, I then felt like playing some XCom. I can only hope the actual gameplay is so good I feel like I'm receiving a lap dance from Jessica Alba; otherwise, it really wasn't worth the bother to me.

Sorry to hear it sucked for you. It was an easy start for me, just clicking on Dark Souls and going to town. I hope the controller issues go away for you soon and you can get to the meat of this game shortly.

Dunno what your fifteen years of IT experience has to do with your ability to evaluate the quality of a port of a video game. Also I didn't have any problems getting it working despite my measly twelve years of IT experience, so I'm not seeing the correlation.

One time I jumped through a bunch of hoops to get a lap dance from Jessica Alba and I was like man I hope this lap dance is so good I feel like I'm playing Dark Souls.

The port is not perfect, the graphics are on par with the console, but could have been much better OOTB. Thanks to DSFix, though, it's not a problem.

Hacking is horrific for some people and can be a turnoff for the online PVP experience.

This sounds like general PC gaming/GFWL shitfuckery that comes with the territory, sorry.

Otherwise the port is pretty great. The game works, there are no game breaking bugs introduced and it runs pretty solid, assuming you have the minimum requirements.

"I've been in IT for fifteen years" is probably going to come back to haunt you. Do you by any chance have a cardboard cutout that illustrates the authenticity of your statement?

I'm glad you got your issues sorted and will add "disconnect other controllers" to the list of PC tips. If you have the link to the specific .dll solution that you followed, that would be useful.

LOL I loves me the internet. My 15 years comment wasn't bragging, obviously, it was just meant to convey that at least on my home box with a 2-month-old Windows install, getting Dark Souls running would've been beyond the ability of your typical home user. I could've, and almost went with, that I've built my home systems for the last 18 years or so. . .either statement was meant to convey that I might be a skosh more technical than even the typical PC gamer. And that for me, getting the game working was probably the worst installation PITA I've seen for a game in years. And a quick search for Dark Souls PC issues will generate enough info to belie the claim that it's "an excellent port." It's clearly not. Anyways, I do hope it's a great game. It definitely seems to have its fans.

I'm not a racist either. I have black friends. And gay friends too. Oh, and sometimes you just need to reboot Windows. . .but that level of expertise only comes after a few years in IT.

"skosh"? I learn something new every day.

Just want to point out that you can do a search for any PC game and find a truck load of technical issues whether or not the game is a port. Also the majority of your issues seem to have very little to do with the game and more to do with your PC and fan made hacks (GFWL, controllers, DSFix) yet have no problem laying those issues at the feet of game developer rather than MS or the DSFix guy. Or maybe your home built PC is questionable and these problems are unique, I think we know who to blame (along with their 15 years of IT experience) for that.

Obama.

Well, sure, except for the fact that there are quite a few "fix it" guides for Dark Souls that specifically, consistently, list fixes for GFWL, controllers, DSFix, etc. So that kinda/sorta suggests to me that plenty of others are experiencing the same problems getting the game running after it's installed. So probably not just my home system. And, yes, I'm sure there are those who installed the game without encountering the issues I saw. . .but obviously there are plenty who did.

It worked fine for me with no headache at all and no fiddling required beyond installing DSFix and spending maybe ten minutes guessing and checking to find the settings that would run smoothly on my machine. I do only have twelve years of experience in IT though, so maybe in a few more years it'll take me a lot more work and still run horribly.

Oh yes, clearly. Also, there are no good games or movies. It's amazing the things you learn by searching the internet for negative opinions of things!

And again, none of those issues are issues that are caused by the game but are all tangential components that From Software has no control over.

Well this thread turned out to be a great idea.

C'mon, my post was clearly written to reflect my personal, anecdotal experience. I never suggested everyone is experiencing these problems. But the fact that multiple guides that cover the exact list of issues I encountered does suggest my experience was hardly unique. Please stop hating my advanced IT skills with plugging/unplugging USB schtuff.

Having to delete controller drivers, reboot, and reinstall those exact same drivers to get the device working in a game is directly related to From Software's code; not exactly "all tangential components that From Software has no control over". And the company chose to go with GFWL despite an online petition's protest of the decision.

Yeah, sorry, dude. My post should convey a simple buyer beware. If you choose to buy, hopefully you don't have any problems but if you do there are work-arounds online a quick Google search will find.

Well you seem more reasonable now that you're not talking in such inflammatory terms...

Yeah.

Guess I"m just one of those "saps" who had the sheer temerity to experience any problems with this excellent port.

"Indeed"

FWIW, I have zero years of IT experience and it also took me about an hour of jumping through hoops to get the PC version to run (well, maybe 45 minutes to get it to run at all, and then 15 minutes to get DSFix working). Had to reinstall GFWL, Windows Essentials, and IE 9 to get GFWL working, and then had to use an older version of DSFix because the new one just wouldn't work no matter how I played with the settings.

I have zero years of IT experience and it took me an entire day to get it running. Let's see, first I bought it on Steam. Then I started the download. Then I went to bed. Then I went to work. Then I came home. Then I turned on my computer. Then I clicked the play button. Then GFWL updated. Then I played the game.

On a more serious note, do you have reason to believe this was specific to DS and not something you'd have dealt with playing any GFWL title?

I've never had a problem getting a GFWL title working before. I don't really care whose "fault" it was that it didn't work this time. It could be Steam's for all I know, since that messed around with the GFWL installation when I first started the game.

This game runs and looks excellent on my e6850 3.0ghz, 6gb RAM, GTX 460 system at 1920x1200 with all the bells and whistles (although I switched it to FXAA instead of DSFix's SMAA default).

The game will undoubtedly run better than the console, of which I heard has bad frame rate problems. If the game isn't super-smooth, DSFix allows you to turn off the Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) that it introduces to the game. You can also turn the Depth of Field back to default (DSFix sets this to higher quality), as well as use FXAA at low or medium quality.

The best part is that the upscaling looks pretty good, if you want to go from, say, 1600x900 onto a 1920x1080 to squeak out some extra frames. Apparently the game is pretty heavy on the CPU usage so the fact that I'm getting great results on a e6850 means a relatively new gaming laptop should have no trouble on that end.


As for GFWL problems, you should install the newest GFWL. I believe it comes with Marketplace too, which you can just not use at all.

Also, you can grab DSFix and higher resolution fonts (a necessity when using DSFix) from here:
http://darksouls.nexusmods.com/mods/top/

That was the first thing I tried. After just updating it didn't work, I tried uninstalling GFWL and reinstalling that version. It wasn't until I reinstalled all IE 9 and Windows Live Essentials as well, that it worked.

That's pretty nuts, I'm sorry you had to go through that. I don't have Live Essentials.

You deserve so much worse.

Prostate cancer, perhaps?

I have Steam installed to a secondary hard drive myself, and Dark Souls also refused to run for me when I first got it. After a bit of internet digging I found out that the way to fix it was to set DARKSOULS.EXE to run as an administrator. Then since I have a Logitech controller and not an Xbox one for my PC, I had to download x360ce to get the controller mapping right. Pretty quick, but I'd say beyond the abilities of an average PC user. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to download DSFix or x360ce or make the EXE administrator fix or whatever, (took me about an hour to figure it all out.) It's that you have to at all.

So what I'm saying is yes, it's a half-assed port, albeit a fixable one. Which is okay for people like us, because we know how to fix it! So, great game or shit port? It can be both!

The non-xbox controller issue is common to Xbox ports. The Xbox uses a different input scheme, MS ported it to Windows but I believe only actual Xbox controllers are recognized by the OS to use that input scheme. Using x360ce and other programs to fake it (MotioninJoy does similar to get PS3 controllers recognized as Xbox controllers on the PC) are workarounds. I'm not sure why MS doesn't enable the new input library for non Xbox controllers that at least have matching features (button and analog stick count).

Again that's a GFWL/MS problem, not a Dark Souls problem. You would have that problem with GTA4 as well, and that was most certainly not a shitty port.