SubscribeGaming On Windows
Here's a quick one to dust off the cobwebs and purge my system of these poisonous humours.
While running Steam on Slackware I was always keenly aware of those "Not Available on Your Platform" dialogs, their barbs sinking deep into my envy gland. "I really should get me a Windows license." I thought - "The green pastures of carefree gaming over there on Windows will be mine. It will all Just Work, Seamlessly."
Ha!
GFWL Bullshit
Games For Windows Live is an abortive PC gaming platform conceived by Microsoft to make Windows gaming more ... Xbox-y. Many games require it before allowing you to even play. Standard evil DRM. I mistakenly thought using Steam would limit me to one evil DRM platform.
As the GFWL Service no longer exists, this essentially requires you have an Xbox live account... and your games now complain if you haven't upgraded to "Gold" or whatever their "Fuck you, pay me" tier is called.
I've had a lot of fun with GFWL. Here's the sequence of events as I recall them.
- I am happily playing Fallout 3, clock up a few thousand hours.
- GTA IV on offer? Oh, go on then.
- Have to sign into GFWL to save my offline game in GTA IV.
- On its next run, Fallout 3 detects I have signed into GFWL and:
- Requires a product key (which I don't have) to load, then...
- Stops using my existing save games.
Shite! To get my save games back I had to install this Definitely-not-dodgy Fallout 3 GFWL patch.
XInput Bullshit
You remember PC Gaming, right? Any old crappy USB joypad works.
Well, not any more. There's an API called XInput which is designed to work exclusively with Xbox 360 compatible controllers. Yep, you all have to buy new controllers or, alternatively, get an advanced degree in DLL-fuckology.
But not every game is on board with this XInput bullshit. Want your expensive 360 sticks to work with games made before, say, 2006? Or ones that simply don't support Xinput? Tough shit.
This XInput / DirectInput thing is such a cluster fuck that there's a whole market of Game controllers with a switch to select which standard you need per-game
What's that? This rant belongs in 2007? Hey fuck you, I'm old. It takes me a long time to figure out the arbitrary anti-engineering decisions of fucked up commercial entities.
Comments
Mon, 30 May 2016 11:57
Fri, 03 Jun 2016 22:03
I had a couple of different software things working but switching between the two standards was hassle.
I ended up getting one of these : http://speedlink.com/?pid=28040
They're OK quality. Just OK. I had to open mine up to stop the 'A' button contac bouncing so much and if there's not enough power on the USB bus the vibration motors can get stuck and the controller might reset.
(i.e. if you use an unpowered hub you're going to have a bad time and Windows still has no way to disable vibration globally for Xinput).
Despite all this, it's still better than messing with it in software.
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