X: Rebirth

[Gelston]

Picked it up. I've always loved the X series. It is buggy as shit, as is all X games on release. In about a year it will be quite awesome though.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bb_jCP1mJo

[Jarvan]

I have all the others, I plan on waiting on this one till the steam sale next summer. Should be cheap then.

[Gelston]

That is probably a good idea. I was opening lockers to get junk out of them, and got stuck.... Sometimes the computer on the ship decides to not open and you sit there staring at your co-pilot... It will be fixed up nicely in a few months to a year though... Especially when mods roll out.

[Taernath]

The steam forums and meatcritic are filled with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[Gelston]

The steam forums and meatcritic are filled with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Yeah. When a game launches with bugs, people complain a lot (as they should.) Nothing new for the X series though.

[Gelston]

hahaha, my game bugged somehow and it caused me to get knocked out of one of the big space lanes... So I'm now 1.4 million kilometers from anything.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/488934156536947387/E2DEDF8539266DAACCA5D148BA3C2DC905DE3861/

:(

[Ryku]

God the game does look good. Any of you that picked it up feel like its got a little more of that Privateer feel than the previous X games or no?

[waywardgs]

Privateer was such a great game for its time

[Gelston]

I've actually given up on it until it is patched a bit more. I am like an hour into the game, and I didn't save often and my ship is stuck like 3 weeks of real time from the nearest space highway.... So yeah... I'm gonna start a new game when the game is patched.

[Taernath]

Don't you drop out right next to the lane?

But yeah, it's buggy as fuck. I can't even complete the tutorial. The first time all the NPCs started crabwalking at a station and my objective marker disappeared. Yesterday I couldn't talk to anyone/use keyboard shortcuts.

[Gelston]

You are supposed to, but it dropped me in the middle of nothing. I was on a blue lane, which is the super highways that go further distance.

[Johnny Five]

Remember the days when companies used to do proper testing? Rather sad that we think bugs/glitches/crashes are acceptable now.

[Gelston]

This company NEVER did proper testing. They have excellent post launch support and patching though.

[Taernath]

This company NEVER did proper testing. They have excellent post launch support and patching though.

I hope so. I've played the previous ones but not at launch.

There's an interesting hypothesis (http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=349638) that Rebirth was originally supposed to be a console game that was hurriedly ported to PC. I don't know how much of it I believe (or how much I really care), but the amount of bugs and lack of reviewer copies preventing pre-launch reviews is worrying.

[Gelston]

Look at the release of X3, heh, that was a giant mess. It was in great shape by the time it had expansions out, however. A great thing about the X series though, is the modding. They always have had amazing support for mods.

As far as the console thing, people are saying that about all PC games nowadays, especially on a buggy launch. I don't think it is so much that they are trying to go for console releases... More that the trend in everything is this streamlined look/feel. From iPhones to Windows 8.

- The fact the whole game was written around the Xbox controller. The whole UI and controls were designed around it. Keyboard+mouse works (kind of), but joystick support is abysmal, not to mention the other controllers like HOTAS, but what works seamlessly with the game is the Xbox controller alone.

Well, you can play the game on your computer with an XBox 360 controller. Heck, windows 8 comes with the software already on your machine to accept the controller.

- The control options are drastically cut back and there are unbindable and missing hotkeys. Kind of like all bad console ports we've seen. (no targeting controls? In a game with space dogfights? REALLY?!)

The game works about the same, as far as space combat, as X3 does. I don't know what he means. There are targeting controls.

- Rebirth's engine uses DirectX 9.0c, not DX10 or 11, but 9, the same version used by the Xbox 360.

The game is also 64 bit, just like the XBox 360. As stated earlier, the game was far into dev before DX11 was available and 10 was probably a little to late to the game for the cycle.

- Texture quality and graphical fidelity is horrible across the board. It's only made to look better by piling on tons of shaders and effects, which ultimately caused the appalling framerates on even the strongest rigs.

It looks good to me, to be honest., in space that is. Walking around as the pilot is terrible. Even compared to a 360 game.

- Text on the screen is tiny and unreadable at high resolutions. But it's perfetly readable at 720p and lower (TV resolution).

I run mine at 1080, I read the text just fine. Maybe his monitor is too small.

- The FOV is locked to around 60 (perfect for TV).

Aren't most TVs widescreen these days? Mine is. Monitors and TVs are pretty much interchangeable now.

- Heavily compressed file sizes (fit neatly on one DVD), mostly seen in Xbox360 releases. Not required (and actually counter productive) for PC releases.

I'd say they compressed it because they make most their sales via online download. You don't want to sit there and D/L a game all day. Common practice.

- "Xbox" tags are all over in the game's files. In a PC-only game...

See what I said under controllers. I'm thinking that is just optimization to use that input device. I will concede that they perhaps have the SteamBox console in mind, however.

- The UI is terrible and a nightmare to navigate with anything other than the Xbox controller. There is also no gravidar (again, in a space game with dogfights), the map system is a joke and there are no control option for anything else.

I can agree with this. Mods!

- Now, it can be argued this is mere conjuncture, but the popular gimmicks (FPS mode), the flashy spectacle instead of functional graphics, horrible UI, the minigames and the woefully restricted gameplay is a staple of console games and console ports and have absolutely no place in PC-only simulator games. They look really out of place, not to mention no X title (or other PC space simulation) ever had any of these.

But they are appearing in PC only games more commonly these days. They exist to artificially bloat the game's play time. It isn't need in an X game, but they did it anyways.

Of course.....

"At the moment we aren't working on a port to console, but we have received a number of inquiries into this possibility. I would start by saying that the new improved controls in X Rebirth represented the biggest needed step to go in this direction. With this improvement, the game can now work well with consoles," Lehahn said. "I would also highlight that the hardware architecture of the next gen consoles has many similarities to the PC. For example, the new consoles bring a lot of memory, which is one of the most critical hardware features we needed. However, taking the game to consoles is something that we have yet to explore in-depth. Stay tuned."

Read more at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/129117-Egosoft-Boss-X-Rebirth-Reboot-Sheds-Limitations-of-Legacy#8AukMW7UV0sUeeSv.99

So it is a big yes and no.

[Whirlin]

- Rebirth's engine uses DirectX 9.0c, not DX10 or 11, but 9, the same version used by the Xbox 360.


Honestly, this complaint REALLY annoys me when people make it... I'm aware it wasn't you, so this is just kind of a general rant.

DirectX is updated like, 50 times a year with various patches, and each and every one of them functions the slightest bit differently. While it may be completely minor, and irrelevant changes, when you take into account that there are multiple Graphics Card manufacturers, with multiple chipsets running on a myriad of different mother boards with different chipsets, the combinations become a bitch and a half to code for visual aspects.

DirectX and other Middlewear need to be determined upon initiation of the development process, to keep them constant. Otherwise you're basically trying to code to a moving standard.

Plus, EVERYONE does it... that's the part that people need to understand. Whenever you download a steam game, you likely download a NEW version of DirectX *.*. It's not uncommon for each game to use their own version, and rather than forcing up/down versioning of DirectX, to just have multiple, redundant versions on your machine.

tl;dr, grr... people. Thank you for defending the game.