PC gamers might be familiar with the name Durante (Peter Thoman), a video game modder who has gained fame for "fixing" multiple PC game ports in the past. His most notable patch is "DSfix", a patch for the original version of Dark Souls, which allowed players to bypass the game's 30fps lock. He also made patches for Little King's Story, Deadly Premonition, and Tales of Symphonia. Later on, he would be contracted by XSEED to port both Trails of Cold Steel I and II to PC as well, resulting in positive reception on both releases. Now, Thoman, along with two other co-founders have started up PH3 Games, a studio that helps developers bring their games to the PC platform. Currently, they're already working on an unannounced project, with more to certainly be revealed in the future.

Source
Official Site

 

[tech3475]

Publishers will be annoyed, now they wont have someone to fix their **** for free.

 

[Darksabre72]

wow never heard of about this dude before, but i can't wait to see what game they will fix.

 

[Xzi]

Uh-oh, ports! If people on this site have taught me anything, it's that a system is dead as soon as it starts receiving ports. You had a nice run, PC.

 

[Ericthegreat]

View attachment 156698​

PC gamers might be familiar with the name Durante (Peter Thoman), a video game modder who has gained fame for "fixing" multiple PC game ports in the past. His most notable patch is "DSfix", a patch for the original version of Dark Souls, which allowed players to bypass the game's 30fps lock. He also made patches for Little King's Story, Deadly Premonition, and Tales of Symphonia. Later on, he would be contracted by XSEED to port both Trails of Cold Steel I and II to PC as well, resulting in positive reception on both releases. Now, Thoman, along with two other co-founders have started up PH3 Games, a studio that helps developers bring their games to the PC platform. Currently, they're already working on an unannounced project, with more to certainly be revealed in the future.

Source
Official Site

Why though, im sure they couldve had their studio do these fixes, just seems like incompetence, or just not caring about their product. If they were literally:

CEO: Fuck it, its a port, do it for $5.
Lead Dev: But sir the game plays like shit, QA says its unacceptable.
CEO: Thats why I gave you $5, fix it.


Because if so, I dont see this fixing the issue. Its not like theyer opening this studio to work for free, and are the publishers going to be willing to pay, what company that has a 100+ dev workforce budgets this? Why not pay their own devs. I know things are outsourced, but in reality this makes no sense, when PC for years now is a mainstream platform.

 

[kuwanger]

Uh-oh, ports! If people on this site have taught me anything, it's that a system is dead as soon as it starts receiving ports. You had a nice run, PC.

That only holds for any closed, proprietary system. The only compelling reason to buy a closed, proprietary system is either (1) its UI (which can be mostly duplicated, (2) its OS (which can be mostly duplicated), (3) its computational power (which can be mostly duplicated), or (4) exclusive content (which can be a lot harder to duplicate if it's a moving target*). With an open system, you get non-exclusive content and generally all the above can be incorporated over time if it's sufficiently advantageous.

Having said that, ports alone do not make a system dead. The GBA started out with ports, for instance. The Switch has plenty of ports. A sufficiently popular closed, proprietary system with sufficient amounts of exclusives can have a large collection of ports because there will continue to be a steady stream of more exclusives. It's the relative ratio of exclusives to ports on any closed, proprietary system that really defines the health of that platform. When the system is open, though, it can be composed wholly of ports and still be successful.

* Microsoft made it quite a habit to duplicate "good enough" all four I listed, but especially (4) which is why they've had such a negative reputation among software makers. In retrospect, I'm glad Microsoft did it even if it's clear that Microsoft's intention was likely at least partially malevolent.

PS - And somewhat on topic, but there's also Kaldaien who did similar efforts on Tales and other games but may be retired from it?

 

[Xzi]

That only holds for any closed, proprietary system. The only compelling reason to buy a closed, proprietary system is either (1) its UI (which can be mostly duplicated, (2) its OS (which can be mostly duplicated), (3) its computational power (which can be mostly duplicated), or (4) exclusive content (which can be a lot harder to duplicate if it's a moving target*). With an open system, you get non-exclusive content and generally all the above can be incorporated over time if it's sufficiently advantageous.

Having said that, ports alone do not make a system dead. The GBA started out with ports, for instance. The Switch has plenty of ports. A sufficiently popular closed, proprietary system with sufficient amounts of exclusives can have a large collection of ports because there will continue to be a steady stream of more exclusives. It's the relative ratio of exclusives to ports on any closed, proprietary system that really defines the health of that platform. When the system is open, though, it can be composed wholly of ports and still be successful.

* Microsoft made it quite a habit to duplicate "good enough" all four I listed, but especially (4) which is why they've had such a negative reputation among software makers. In retrospect, I'm glad Microsoft did it even if it's clear that Microsoft's intention was likely at least partially malevolent.

I guess I should've been more obvious with my facetiousness.

 

[kuwanger]

I guess I should've been more obvious with my facetiousness.

Sorry, I thought you might have been. I just tend to ramble about the evils of closed systems.

 

[tech3475]

Why though, im sure they couldve had their studio do these fixes, just seems like incompetence, or just not caring about their product. If they were literally:

CEO: Fuck it, its a port, do it for $5.
Lead Dev: But sir the game plays like shit, QA says its unacceptable.
CEO: Thats why I gave you $5, fix it.


Because if so, I dont see this fixing the issue. Its not like theyer opening this studio to work for free, and are the publishers going to be willing to pay, what company that has a 100+ dev workforce budgets this? Why not pay their own devs. I know things are outsourced, but in reality this makes no sense, when PC for years now is a mainstream platform.

I suspect a large part of it is that PC development can be more complicated compared to consoles, for example, hardware configurations, drivers, windows versions, etc. combined with concerns over ROI.

IIRC I saw a picture of MS's old Windows patch debug rooms once and it was filled with computers with different configurations.

If this team proves reliable, then it may be cheaper to just outsource to them than to rely on internal development, offer to fix games which are released and broken and/or they may be aiming to port games which otherwise would remain console exclusive.

 

[Dr.Hacknik]

Now, can he fix NieR: Auomata please.
I know the Far mod exists, but I feel as if he could do better.

 

[Kioku]

Why though, im sure they couldve had their studio do these fixes, just seems like incompetence, or just not caring about their product. If they were literally:

CEO: Fuck it, its a port, do it for $5.
Lead Dev: But sir the game plays like shit, QA says its unacceptable.
CEO: Thats why I gave you $5, fix it.


Because if so, I dont see this fixing the issue. Its not like theyer opening this studio to work for free, and are the publishers going to be willing to pay, what company that has a 100+ dev workforce budgets this? Why not pay their own devs. I know things are outsourced, but in reality this makes no sense, when PC for years now is a mainstream platform.

It's been shown, quite a few times, that the likes of BAMCO and a few other publishers don't quite grasp the PC world. When they port games over that are frame locked, or buggy as all hell, there's clearly some ignorance on their part. This studio makes a lot more sense than you'd think.

 

[WiiUBricker]

That’s the guy who fixed Berseria and Zestiria. Should have been hired by Bamco.

 

[Tizm]

inb4 saints row 2 finally gets fixed.

 

[Ericthegreat]

I suspect a large part of it is that PC development can be more complicated compared to consoles, for example, hardware configurations, drivers, windows versions, etc. combined with concerns over ROI.

IIRC I saw a picture of MS's old Windows patch debug rooms once and it was filled with computers with different configurations.

If this team proves reliable, then it may be cheaper to just outsource to them than to rely on internal development, offer to fix games which are released and broken and/or they may be aiming to port games which otherwise would remain console exclusive.

What I'm saying is that they just don't seem to care about the quality of the PC port at all.

 

[Fusion]

inb4 saints row 2 finally gets fixed.

That game has been fixed from the Gentlemen of tha row mod team and brang over the exclusive content to PC too. Recently a member of their team has been porting Gentlemen of tha row back to the Xbox360.

ON-Topic, this is good news if it helps games get proper support for the PC (or ported in general *cough Red Dead Redemption cough* with it's source is a mess or lost source excuse) when ported over and not done to make consoles look "better" due to their lazy ass ports

 

[Enkuler]

That only holds for any closed, proprietary system. The only compelling reason to buy a closed, proprietary system is either (1) its UI (which can be mostly duplicated, (2) its OS (which can be mostly duplicated), (3) its computational power (which can be mostly duplicated), or (4) exclusive content (which can be a lot harder to duplicate if it's a moving target*).

I guess you were really talking about "closed vs open, all other things being equal" and not necessarily practically about "any console vs PC", but I'd add an argument to that list in the second case. Portability, which obviously only applies to portable consoles, but that still makes an argument to buy them rather-than or in-addition-to a PC.

 

[Bernhard]

damn,good news

 

[kuwanger]

I guess you were really talking about "closed vs open, all other things being equal" and not necessarily practically about "any console vs PC", but I'd add an argument to that list in the second case. Portability, which obviously only applies to portable consoles, but that still makes an argument to buy them rather-than or in-addition-to a PC.

Yea, portable is basically a whole other can of worms. Some of that is just until recently closed software sold portable handheld hardware. Open hardware has become more of a thing, but it's still mostly stuck in emulation. It's still nice at times as a means to run open [Linux] games. Phones are a separate thing again effectively separate from portable handhelds and not really likely to be replaced with open hardware soon, IMHO.

tl;dr - My little rant only applies so long as open hardware already exists in the same space.

 

[Subtle Demise]

I suspect a large part of it is that PC development can be more complicated compared to consoles, for example, hardware configurations, drivers, windows versions, etc. combined with concerns over ROI.

IIRC I saw a picture of MS's old Windows patch debug rooms once and it was filled with computers with different configurations.

If this team proves reliable, then it may be cheaper to just outsource to them than to rely on internal development, offer to fix games which are released and broken and/or they may be aiming to port games which otherwise would remain console exclusive.

It's become far easier these past few years, though. Many games that have come out in this decade use a pre-built engine that they licensed (like the Unreal Engine) that has the ability to be ported to multiple systems at the push of a button. Now a PC port may still require a little manual tweaking of course, due to configurations, low spec hardware, etc., but it really is not as difficult as it was say 19 years ago or more, when consoles were not using off-the-shelf CPUs like they are now, and relied on proprietary hardware and shit like that.

Oops, forgot to add, that I believe I used DSFix to play MGR: Reveangeance on PC. It had an issue where scripted character animations would get desynced and physics would be messed up when playing the game through HDMI.

 

[DarthDub]

Hey it's that guy who added resolution support to Tales of Symphonia and other fixes that Bamco copied from!