Impressions

[Hort]

I went ahead and purchased Bioshock and installed shortly after updating to the latest NVidia drivers.

Ran a Kaspersky scan after the install and so far no red flags.

The game is, visually, omg stunning. At full eye candy and 1920x1200 not a single slow down so far.

Story, thus far, is compelling. Overall, it's among the freshest game concepts I've seen. I'm a big fan of Art Deco, noir-ish scenes anyway so this is especially attractive.

Haven't figured out how to take screenshots yet.

[Phanataz]

Same here, despite my bitching in the previous thread about rootkits/DRM. The install and activation went smooth. I didn't find any malicious software installed. I figured the game was worth taking a risk since I enjoyed the demo so much.

I am running it at 1920 x 1000 as well. I have a 8800 gtx, 5600+, and 2 gb of ram. I am getting 50-60ish framerates most of the time. On my ATI 1800x card I was getting around 20-30ish framerates at 1024 x 768. Im running it in XP, so no DX10.

It's hard locked my computer once, but thats the only complaint I had about it.

I'm taking my time with it. I've been playing it for almost a week and im still in the Medical Pavillion

[Hort]

:bash: screenshots... gah. It's apparently unsupported beyond one shot at a time using printscreen.

You'll need Fraps or similar.

[Creeper]

Must be a feature to cut down on theft of intellectual property and game art.

[Hort]

They also didn't include an FPS check. Perhaps Fraps is paying them...

[Phanataz]

I'm always frapping while playing my games.

[SoBeiT]

I'm always frapping while playing my games.



from you,"frapping" sounds :naughty: somehow.


hehehe

[Hort]

Beginning to have crash problems. Found info about turning off high detail shaders. That helped for a little while but frequently now, when I pick up a plasmid or use a machine and a new window opens, I lock up.

[Phanataz]

Its not your machine.. im having the same problem. I keep checking for a new patch, but nothing so far from 2Kgames. Are you using the latest beta drivers from Nvidia?

[Hort]

Yup- and they've been very stable. This is the only thing I'm having trouble with. I'll probably hold on playing any more until this gets resolved.

I'm in Neptune now... I just love the Ayn Rand influences and look and feel... but the gameplay isn't particularly special.

[Phanataz]

i had my first encounter with a big daddy tonight. That thing hits hard. Took me an hour but finally got two of them then my computer froze. When i went back into the game, i had to reconfigure my settings.

No word of a patch update, unfortunately. A news update would be nice..

[MadMikey]

i had my first encounter with a big daddy tonight.

I had no idea, Phan. How long are you in for?

:D

[Phanataz]

Yeah yeah... ;)

Hort, any advice on killing the big daddies? They seem to take forever to kill and I have to die a hundred deaths before I finally get one taken out. Also, sometimes the little sister is no where to be found after I do take one down.

[Hort]

Certain weapons work better than others, armor piercing rounds for the pistol and electric buck for example. But even then they take a long while. Using the shock plasmid helps. I haven't tried fire. And use the room to your advantage.

[Phanataz]

Is the ice plasmid in the medical pavilion? havent gotten it yet.

[Hort]

Is the ice plasmid in the medical pavilion? havent gotten it yet.


I've only found fire and the electrical... I haven't played much the last week with the crashing issue. I need to go back to Medical as I left one boss behind.

[Phanataz]

I think telekinesis is in the medical pavilion as well.

[Hort]

I think telekinesis is in the medical pavilion as well.
yup - I forgot to mention that one.

[Phanataz]

Got the winter plasmid. That looks painful when you activate it lol

[Hort]

About the big daddys. Have the grenade launcher? About 4-5 shots from that and maybe a couple of bucks can usually bring it down.

Are you rescuing or harvesting?

[Phanataz]

Finally got some time to play last night . What a terrible week, blah...anyway. Took me about 40 minutes to bring down another big daddy.

I rescued the very first little sister I encountered, but Atlas was telling me to harvest them. Since then I've been harvesting them for ADAM. I'm guessing the game takes a different turn if you rescue them? I know they aren't really human, but it still feels wrong to harvest them. lol

Yes I finally got the grenade launcher. Thats been helping alot actually lol

[Hort]

Harvesting gives you 2x the Adam as rescue. I just switched to harvest.

It'd be easier if you could dodge. :P

[Hort]

This thing crashes EVERY time I play. The last crash lost about a third of my saved progress.

Where do I get a refund?

[Phanataz]

Do you know what your cpu/gpu temps are just after you exit out of the game? Do you have EAX/High Detailed shaders off? I was wondering because I took the side cover off of my case and I stopped crashing (at least for now).

[Phanataz]

Oh, supposedly adding -dx9 to the end of your command line for the Bioshock shortcut fixes most of the crashing..

i.e.
"c:\Program Files\2K Games\BioShock\Builds\Release\Bioshock.exe" -dx9

[Hort]

I've tried with shaders off and it helped a little at first. Haven't checked temps but I can run through the Lost Planet demo no trouble. I was thinking heat but sometimes it crashes three minutes in. There are now hundreds complaining about the lack of patch.

[Hort]

At idle/general use according to nTune the gpu's are around 74c. Hmmmm... pretty warm.

[Phanataz]

Hmm what is it just after quitting Bioshock?

[Hort]

hAVEN'T TRIED THAT BUT AFTER 40 MINUTES HL2 THEIR ONLY 79. aPPARENTLY 74 ISN'T ALL THAT ODD. i'LL TRY (whoops. caps) I'll try Bio later.

[The_Stranger]

Played the demo which wouldn't let me assign quick save to any keys, and glitched out every time I tried. As it turned out, I didn't really need to save for the short duration of the demo. There were other people asking about this and other prioblems, but few solutions. It seems like there are a lot of technical issues with the game. Other than the glitch, it was pretty fun as long as it lasted.

The slicers gave me a kinda deja vu feeling which I couldn't explain until I remembered this video :D:


n1wnOUH2jk8

[Hort]

FIXED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From Nobula over at the 2k forums. Three options. Soluytion #3 related to tablet options works PERFECTLY- an hour with no crashes so far.

Solution #1:

The quick and dirty solution (which seems to be working for most people) is to run the game in DX9c mode. This seems to work fine with or without SLi turned on and even with drivers older than the most recent version (163.44).

If you've purchased the game through STEAM, simply add the "-dx9" switch at the end of your shortcut command like this:


Quote:
"C:\Program Files\2K Games\BioShock\Builds\Release\Bioshock.exe" -dx9

Or simply right-click the game's icon in Vista's game explorer and choose "Play-Directx 9" from the little menu instead of just "Play." also, if this works for you, you can set the "Play-Directx9" as the default mode of play by choosing "Customize" from the same menu and then movining "Play-Directx9" to the top of the list.

Solution #2:

Play the game in WINDOWED mode. For whatever reason, it will run perfectly fine in windowed mode. It works so well, in fact, that you can actually get past Save points, hacker and vending machine interface screens, etc. while in windowed mode and then press <ALT>+ENTER to switch back to full screen for the action portions of your game. This, of course, is a bit of a pain in the butt and kills the immersive nature of the game terribly.

Solution #3:
The third option (which worked for me) is to disable the Tablet service in Windows Vista. I'm not sure why this worked, but since I did it I've been playing Bioshock in FULLSCREEN MODE with DX10 & SLi turned on and haven't had a single hitch (save for some sound issues but that's another post ;-).

To disable the Tablet service, open the Vista control panel and choose "Programs." The top item in the list should be "Programs and Features." In the sub-categories listed, click on "Turn Windows Features on or off" (it should have a little windows 'shield' icon next to it). A little window should pop up with a bunch of services and features listed. Some will be checked, others won't be... leave 'em be unless you know what you're doing. The one you're looking for is: "Tablet PC Optional Components." Make sure this feature is UNCHECKED (disabled). You'll probably have to reboot your machine as well for this setting to take root.

[Phanataz]

Nice find. Time to spank some big daddies.

[StealthDP]

I need an option where this game will work on my x850 (http://arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2007/08/23/no-bioshock-rapture-in-sight-for-ati-x800x850-users)...


:ack:

[Hort]

Get yourself a GTX or ultra... then you can see what's new in about 6 months. ;)

[Phanataz]

well i went broke buying the 8800 GTX. It's the first time i've made a hardware purchase and i got a major performance increase. I didnt even have to do any tweaking.

To give you an idea, I was getting 4822 3DMarks in 3DMark06 with my 5600+ CPU, 6800 GT setup.

Now im getting 10235 3DMarks with the new Nvidia 8800 GTX and its not even SLI. I havent been this happy with a video card since the day I bought my Voodoo card.

[aarathy]

Bioshock is a one level first person shooter game. So it played from a first-person point of view, and the game does involve a decent amount of combat. It blends elements of a shooter, a stealth game, an adventure game and an RPG. It is really about xploration, problem solving, and survival. I like this game very much.

[StealthDP]

Welcome to the Asylum, aarathy!