Game Tech News

Hardware reviewing is often a hectic process. Whenever you’re dealing with pre-release drivers and early hardware, there’s a greater-than-average chance that something might go wrong. Sometimes, that’s the fault of the company providing the hardware. Sometimes, it’s because the reviewer screwed something up. And sometimes… sometimes it’s because of mind-boggling hardware issues that you didn’t know existed in the first place.

My problems began with the death of my test mouse. At first, this didn’t seem like much of a problem. I typically test hardware with the rig configured next to my workspace for easy access, which makes shifting my work mouse from one system to another relatively easy. In addition, there are plenty of applications that provide quick administrative access to a testbed. Between these various options, I was confident I had things covered, especially since I’ve been using both RDP and TightVNC for years. I turned down my significant other’s offer to use her mouse and opted to manage my various login sessions with TightVNC for mousing and a physically connected keyboard.

I fired up my testbed, installed the new Catalyst 15.7 drivers, launched BioShock Infinite… and the application promptly crashed. This was odd, but it wouldn’t be the first time that an odd bit of driver didn’t get properly uninstalled. I uninstalled AMD’s driver suite, double-checked to make certain there were no odd bits of Nvidia software hanging around the testbed, ran Display Driver Uninstaller, rebooted into Safe Mode, ran the uninstall sequences for both AMD and Nvidia hardware (just to be certain), rebooted again, reinstalled the Catalyst 15.7 driver, ran BioShock Infinite again…
And the game crashed. The 2K intro video played perfectly, but died immediately thereafter.



I’m not sure what this person was trying to say, but they perfectly captured my state of mind.

The problem wasn’t confined to BioShock Infinite. Company of Heroes launched and benchmarked perfectly, but Metro Last Light and Total War: Rome 2 wouldn’t launch at all. At this point, I was convinced I was seeing a driver problem or Steam error — but Steam’s “Check Game Files” option found no errors. Swapping to the Radeon Fury X or a GTX 980 Ti (uninstalling and reinstalling drivers each time) didn’t work, either. Company of Heroes 2 always worked, but Metro Last Light (Safe Mode or regular), BioShock Infinite, and Total War: Rome 2 never did, whether I was using AMD or Nvidia hardware.

I downloaded and reinstalled all three applications from scratch, but it did no good. None of the crash dumps in BioShock Infinite contained any useful information, just a generic “The thread attempted to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access” error. Not helpful. Running “scannow /sfc” on the Windows 8.1 installation fixed nothing, but I clearly had a problem somewhere deep in the OS.



My preferred “drastic solution” at approximately 11 PM on Thursday night.


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Ever since Oculus launched its Kickstarter, hopeful fans of VR technology have looked to the company to provide a cutting-edge gaming solution. Since then, we’ve seen a number of companies announce their own VR efforts, from the Vive (Valve and HTC) the Gear VR (Samsung and Oculus), Razr’s OSVR, the new StarVR, to Sony’s Project Morpheus, there’s currently a race on to see who can provide the best hardware for virtual reality gaming. Unfortunately, as a new reddit thread illustrates, that future may be considerably more fragmented than users would prefer.

Oculus CEO Palmer Lucky took to the PCMasterRace subreddit earlier this week to answer questions around Oculus‘ decision to fund the creation of roughly 24 games that highlight the capabilities of VR technology. Oculus is building more than just a headset — it’s planning to build an entire platform, including motion controllers. Users took to the subreddit to ask how much support Oculus would be offering for other headsets or devices, and what consumers can expect in terms of hardware support.



AMD’s asynchronous shaders are key to its LiquidVR

Palmer notes that Oculus is not a closed platform, meaning the company does not require game developers to submit requests for approval to build titles for the Rift and does not collect a fee for adding Oculus support for games. At the same time, however, the company is investing in its own ecosystem, and it’s not prioritizing projects for other headsets. When asked if it would be easy to add such support, Lucky implied that it wasn’t, saying: “Extending VR support to multiple headsets is not as simple as a patch, it requires pretty deep integration into the code of the game, integration that the developers themselves have to spend a lot of time integrating and updating. This is especially true for games that rely on our SDK features like timewarp, direct mode, late latching, and layered compositor to get a good experience. We can’t possibly make any promises about support through external patches, and we won’t commit to supporting people who want to use our store to buy games for headsets that our store and software don’t currently support.”

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Ever since Batman: Arkham Knight vanished from store shelves amid controversy around the terrible condition of the PC port, there’s been questions about when the game might be back on store shelves. A new leaked email to EB Games suggests that the Caped Crusader won’t return to PCs to conclude his adventures for quite some time. “As previously advised,” read an internal EB Games email, “we have stopped sales of Batman: Arkham Knight PC while Warner and Rocksteady work on addressing performance issues with the game. The latest information from Warner is that the updates won’t be available until Spring. Due to this we have made the difficult decision to recall all PC stock from stores to return to the vendor until an acceptable solution is released.”

“Spring,” in this case, means Australian spring, which begins in September. This jives with other reports that we heard earlier this summer suggesting it would take months to bang the PC version into shape. The good news is, it suggests Rocksteady is committed to fixing the game in the long-term, as opposed to either cutting its losses and running or simply allowing the Steam refund process to take care of unhappy users.

Rocksteady has released one fix for Arkham Knight that addressed certain issues, but no major patches as of yet. The company has stated that DLC production for the PC version is on-hold until it finishes patches up the main game, which implies players who haven’t had problems will have to wait longer to see the full content console players are already enjoying. Then again, early reviews of the first Batgirl DLC have suggested it’s a rote, by-the-numbers adventure that doesn’t do much to tap the unique backstory or capability of one of Batman’s oldest allies.



Previous games, like Arkham City, offered the chance to play as Catwoman.

It’s not the first time that DLC or add-on characters in Arkham titles have been accused of missing the boat. Previous games have offered the chance to step into the shoes of other characters, like Harley Quinn or Catwoman, but have almost always treated these characters as cookie-cutter versions of Batman with access to the same abilities, acrobatic fighting style, and gadgets. The patina of variation is just that — a paper-thin method of differentiation that offers a few small deviations from Batman’s classic fighting style, but rarely deviates enough to feel truly different.

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Yesterday, on AMD’s conference call, CEO Lisa Su announced that the company had recently added a new embedded design win to its portfolio, though without a firm date on when the company might recognize revenue from the win. One potential candidate for a hypothetical new device is Nintendo, which announced earlier this year that it would launch a new hybrid mobile device in 2016, codenamed the NX.

Dean Takahashi has laid out the reasons why he thinks Nintendo has contracted with AMD to build its next-gen console chip. There are multiple reasons to think this is a plausible match. AMD provides designs for every current-generation console on the market, including the existing Wii U’s GPU. The difference between Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft, however, is that Nintendo appears to have licensed an AMD GPU design that’s built by a third-party, Renesas, and the GPU they licensed — by all accounts, a derivative of AMD’s HD 4000 family — was already quite dated even when the Wii U was new.

According to Nintendo, the NX will be a “hybrid” between mobile and traditional living room gaming. This is broad enough to mean almost anything — a tablet like Nvidia’s Shield could conceivably be classified as a “hybrid” if connected to a television, since the machine supports video-out and wireless controllers, while an ultra-portable living room system could conceivably be declared “mobile” as far as picking it up and walking away with it.

One thing we can predict, however, is that Nintendo’s next-generation console will probably focus more on affordability and unique features as opposed to raw performance. Satoru Iwata’s recent passing could change that, if the company’s new president and CEO has a different vision for the future, but Nintendo has a decade-long history of preferring alternative control schemes and innovative technology over raw horsepower. Sony and Microsoft have historically leapt for new process nodes and die shrinks as quickly as they were available, while Nintendo followed updates its consoles at a far more leisurely pace.

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While Windows 10 isn’t officially available until the end of July, early adopters have been running the Insider Preview for months now. And as of a few days ago, those of us running the latest build can take advantage of the Xbox One game streaming functionality in the Windows 10 Xbox app.

In a post on the Xbox Wire, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb walks us through the process of enabling this shiny new feature. If you want to give it a go for yourself, start by heading to the Settings menu on the Xbox One. Under Preferences, you should be able to toggle on a setting titled Allow game streaming to other devices.



Next, make sure you’re running the latest Windows 10 build and the newest version of the Xbox application. Launch the app, navigate to Connect, and select Add a device. Provided you’re on the same network, you should be able to select your Xbox One from this menu. Plug in a controller, go to the Home tab, and then select your console under the Game Streaming section.



Of course, Microsoft isn’t the first out of the gate for local game streaming. Sony allows you to stream PS4 games to the Vita and PlayStation TV over Remote Play, Valve offers in-home streaming in the Steam client, and even Nintendo offers off-TV play for many titles on the Wii U. It’s nice to see Microsoft finally taking advantage of the massive Windows market, but why did it take so long? I called out the Xbox One’s lack of game streaming over a year ago, and Microsoft is just now rolling out that functionality.

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For most of the past decade, the idea of gaming under Linux was a contradiction in terms. Apart from a handful of dedicated titles or ports, the only option that gamers had was to either dual-boot into Windows or deal with the Wine emulator. Valve’s decision to pursue the Linux gaming market and develop its own Linux-based operating system has changed that, with a vast array of indie titles (and a handful of AAA’s) now available on the OS. Unfortunately, it looks as though AMD’s driver team hasn’t quite caught up with the times.

Phoronix has published an article demonstrating how performance in certain games can be significantly improved by renaming executables. Both AMD and Nvidia use application profiles to tell the GPU how to render certain titles in the most optimum fashion. Nvidia users have always enjoyed more freedom to tweak the low-level settings within profiles than their AMD counterparts. What Phoronix found is that renaming the csgo_linux binary to hl2_linux dramatically boosted the frame rate on a range of Radeon cards.




What’s happening here is simple: AMD has created profiles for other Source-based games and packages those profiles as part of its binary blob driver download. When you map Counterstrike: Go to an Half-Life 2 profile, it dramatically improves the game’s performance because HL2 and CS:Go are based on the same Source engine.

Whether or not this technique would work on other games is unknown. In theory, it could be used to apply fixes to titles if a game with a saved profile is built on the same engine as another game without a profile (Unreal Engine 3, for example). In practice, however, this will be a hit-and-miss technique. Two games can use the same base engine, but contain a number of custom libraries or performance-enhancing techniques added by the developer for their own specific title.

Attempting to run one game under the profile settings for another could reduce performance or cause visual bugs depending on the game in question.
Phoronix notes that CS:Go is still exhibiting this behavior despite having been out for nearly a year, but hopefully AMD will release Catalyst Application Profile (CAP) updates for Linux in the near future. Penguinistas may currently account for a small fraction of all gamers, but if Valve’s SteamOS sees significant uptake, that could change in the not-too-distant future. Phoronix also examines performance in several other modern titles, so hit the link above if you want to see additional details.


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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is considered one of the best Star Wars game ever built. Its sequel, Knights Of the Old Republic II, on the other hand, suffered from a rushed release, cut content, and a crippling number of bugs. Obsidian released several patches for the game, but stopped development in 2005. Four years later, a team of modders released The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod, which added a number of missing areas and solved old bugs. Now, without any fanfare, Obsidian has developed its first patch for the game in a decade and released it on Steam.

The new patch contains the following features (quoted from Steam):
• 37 achievements to be earned through gameplay
• Steam Cloud saves
• Native widescreen resolution support
• Resolution support up to 4K and 5K
• Support for controllers, including Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, and Playstation 4, along with several others (check the system requirements for details)
• Steam Workshop support! We proudly worked with the Restored Content Mod Team to have their famous TSLRCM up on launch day
This is a huge update for a once-popular game and, combined with immediate access to the Sith Lords Restored Content Mod, means that playing KOTOR II today can be a much richer experience than it was back in 2005. This mod adds the M478 “Droid Planet” missions and a number of other changes, major and minor. The goal of the TSLRCM was to restore cut content and reintegrate scenes, dialog, and quests that had previously been slashed. Right now, most of the content available in the Steam workshop is tied to his mod, though other projects may soon move over.



The restored Droid planet.

The game is currently on sale for $7.49, and this patch likely clears up a number of issues with the game’s resolution support. I recently replayed KOTOR and had significant problems with cut-scenes, to the point that I had to disable them altogether. Resolution settings and mouse issues were a common problem, and while KOTOR I is two years older than KOTOR II, the games used the same engine and likely had some of the same weaknesses.

If you never played KOTOR II, I’d highly recommend it, particularly with the TSLRCM available. The game’s planned storyline was as good or better than KOTOR’s originally — Obsidian was forced to build the game in a tiny window and simply wasn’t able to complete their vision of what the game should’ve been. With those assets restored, KOTOR II is generally thought to rank as high as the original, particularly if you enjoy a game that dabbles more in shades of gray than its predecessor. Just remember that this is still fundamentally a title from 2005 running on a vintage engine — even with content mods and texture packs, it’s never going to look like a modern game.

In unrelated-but-awesome Star Wars news, a fan project has created a Star Wars VR demo using Unreal Engine 4 and Oculus Rift support. The full trailer looks amazing.

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Microsoft has been working to improve the Xbox One’s value proposition through offering features like backwards compatibility and the ability to stream games from the Xbox One to Windows 10 devices. Now the company is planning to add keyboard and mouse support to the Xbox One. With these features, one of the last significant differentiations between the Xbox One and a standard PC will vanish.

As bit-tech.net details, Phil Spencer responded to a question about whether or not users would be able to stream from a Windows machine to an Xbox One with the following:



To be clear, you can already use a USB mouse and keyboard with an Xbox One, but not for gaming. Windows 10 streaming, for now, is also a one-way affair. If Microsoft brings this feature to Xbox One, it opens the door to a great many options, including the ability to play online against PC users without worrying that PC gamers will have an intrinsic advantage thanks to superior controls and pixel-perfect mousing. While I realize there are gamers who don’t like playing with a mouse and keyboard, there’s no contest as to which method of input offers greater precision. Unlike controllers, a mouse is capable of pinpoint accuracy, while keyboards offer a much greater range of commands and inputs.

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For years, the ability to run Doom on various devices has been a hallmark of a system’s flexibility. We’ve seen the FPS pop up on everything from calculators to copiers, but with embedded devices becoming ever-more powerful, the ability to run code nearly 25 years old has become old hat. It’s time for a new standard (though the ability to run Doom within Doom is a fairly nifty recent achievement), Now, modder Dave Bennet has beaten the Doom-level achievement by getting Valve’s original Half-Life up and running on an LG G Watch.

The LG G Watch runs on a Qualcomm MSM8226 with an Adreno 305 GPU. The original Half-Life isn’t multi-threaded in any fashion, so the game is running effectively on a single-core Cortex-A7 CPU and a DX9-class GPU. Then again, that’s a much higher clock speed than when the game shipped, while the feature set on Adreno 305 is higher than what Half-Life supported at release. As you might expect, this is entirely a proof-of-concept — it’s almost impossible to actually play Half-Life on a 1.65-inch screen, even if the game is running in a touch-responsive wrapper.



This hack is made possible by the SDLash application, which emulates the GoldSource engine. GoldSource is the original Half-Life engine and dates back to the original Quake (albeit in a heavily modified form). The usefulness of such a hack is questionable, since few people are going to try to play a game on a smartwatch; the heat and power requirements would likely drain the battery and burn your wrist at the same time. The frame rate also chugs in places, from a high of 46 FPS to as low as 2 FPS depending on what’s going on in-game. There are multiple potential causes for the instability, from emulator issues to throttling of the smartwatch itself, to underpowered hardware.

Then again, the point is that this is frickin’ Half-Life running on a device that fits on your wrist. Give wearables another few tech generations, and the devices that debut on 14nm or 10nm technology in the future could probably run the game, no problem. Then again, this assumes you’d ever actually want to — controlling Gordon Freeman on a 1.65-inch screen doesn’t sound like actual fun.

Still, as a gamer who was thrilled by the original Half-Life on my K6-233 and 8MB Voodoo 2, seeing it running on a device you wear is pretty incredible, even if it makes me feel about 80 years old.


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Did you experience any unexpected activity on your Steam account last week? Well, it seems that there was a major security flaw in Valve’s password reset feature that allowed anyone to reset your password — even without access to your email. The accounts of numerous popular streamers were compromised for a short period, and Valve is left looking incredibly foolish.

If you forget your Steam password, Valve normally sends you a one-time-use code over email that you can use to reset your password. However, it was discovered last week that Steam wasn’t actually checking to verify that your code was valid. If you simply refrained from entering anything during the authentication step, the client would still allow you to reset the password.

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