hey, I like Skyrim...
You are not thinking with “business sense” and the consequences of it. Why would Providence spend more money to license another engine when they own Bethesda whom owns GameBryo as an “in-house” tool? Suits don’t care about developers, only the bottom line. When Suits control the budget, what they say is law.
Secondly, Providence still funding Bethesda while they still use GameBryo demonstrates incompetence. Son, let me enlighten you to facts about Bethesda. They do not develop or license game engines well and they do not learn from their mistakes.
Part A: They are still using GameBryo, in the year 2012.
Now you might be saying: “But Skyrim uses the Creation engine!”
*pats you on the head* Aaawww that’s cute. Open up the Skyrim executable in notepad, search for GameBryo, shit bricks. Congratulations you discovered that Creation is GameBryo!
Renaming the engine was a PR move because GameBryo gained infamy due to the buggyness of Fallout 3, even greater buggyness of Fallout: New Vegas and bankrupting the parent company that originally developed it! (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/13/emergent-to-sell-gamebryo-and-the-rest-of-its-assets/)
Part B: They are still using GameBryo poorly, in the year 2012.
OH the examples, the examples of how the engine burned Bethesda over and over again. I will show you my favorite:
New Vegas Uncut: Freeside Open (http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/46355)
(http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/images/46355-1-1337968434.jpg)
Ladies and gents, it quite insane to develop an open world game when your engine struggles to handle 10+ NPCs at a time or render far distances. God help you if they have an AI more complex that move from point A to B and have to render far distances. This is no more of a tragic example than what Freeside was supposed to be.
Restored: Gamblers will now constantly stream into Freeside on their way to the Strip and its casinos (some will also stop off at the Atomic Wrangler) as they were always meant to. They are of course easy picking for thugs or even the player, so some have hired bodyguards to protect them.
Depending on the in game time of day there usually are 5+ npcs moving from one gate to the other, only the guards have combat AI. Just going near them drops your frame rate noticeably, running with the will cause a CTD because…
Freeside is now one coherent world space. NPCs can now go everywhere in the city with obvious dramatic improvements to gameplay/immersion.
No gated, small loading zones mean far distances have to be loaded. I am not just talking about rendering, level geometry alone can cause the engine to choke and die. If you have the sprint mod do not spring across open freeside because that would be overkill for the engine. CTD before you even get halfway.
Part C: ME1’s ENGINE DID BETTER
How many NPCs with combat AI were on screen at a time?
How many particle effects were going on then?
How far was the render distance?
The worst version of Bioware’s game engine could do more, faster than the engine that Bethesda licensed and later developed themselves for years. First let that sink in a bit, second knowing this why would you want them to develop a Mass Effect game?
I will point out that while some games on launch are bug free (me3 for instance on launch)...
Please don't say that, its not true. Ask the creator of the ME3 save editor for an overview of all the bugs related to importing a save from ME2 and all the unofficial fixes that had to be made via the save editor.
Not counting face import woes.
- The suicide result of [Jacob: The Gift of Greatness] does not appear to be set
correctly in ME2 save files, or ME3 checks the wrong plot bool (362). Other
mission results (marooned, arrested) have not been checked.
- Thane's death (citprs_hosp_thanedeath_d_dlg), line "Goodbye, Thane. Meet you
across the sea." incorrectly checks [DLC: Lair of the Shadow Broker]
completion via checking conditional_226 (this line probably intended to check
romance flags instead).
- Liara touring the Normandy in ME2 during [DLC: Lair of the Shadow Broker] does
not appear to have been stored correctly in plot bools (plot bool 6941).
True but crashes etc were rare compared to other games at launch
It is good that you noticed such. The flack Bioware caught for the "black screen of death" bug was undeserved, as their software did not cause it. The software that caused it was Xbox live and GFWL. (http://www.ethicalgamer.com/wp/2012/04/09/resantes-fix-for-mass-effect-3s-black-hole-glitch/)
In case this is not clear, look at the software in the unofficial patch which is linked to in the articled linked in this post. The XDBF Entry Tool is specifically made to edit Xbox live accounts/profile info. This includes achievements, copied saves, ect. TL:DR The fix is you manually removing three corrupted files then redownloading that chunk of the game.
The read me is spoilered below:
MASS EFFECT 3 BLACK HOLE GLITCH FIX by Resante of the BLACK HOLE GROUP
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Each profile has a directory on whatever your storage media is (hdd, usb, etc.) Your profile has multiple subdirectories with saves, and also a location with a .gpd files containing
info on all of the games you have played. This ME3 .gpd file is the problem. When you redownload your profile it redownloads all of the .gpd files from MS.
R E A D T H I S F I R S T . R E A D T H I S F I R S T . R E A D T H I S F I R S T . R E A D T H I S F I R S T .
** Follow these steps at your own risk!! By following these instructions you take responsibility for anything that may happen to your profile / gamertag and/or your PC.**
NOTE: Achievement process counters WILL be reset to 0 after you do this fix. Counters such as kills toward Veteran, melee kills, levels toward the Peak Condition achievement.. anything with a counter will be reset. Also any bonus powers you had unlocked will not be available in the medical bay until you unlock them again.
R E A D T H I S F I R S T . R E A D T H I S F I R S T . R E A D T H I S F I R S T . R E A D T H I S F I R S T .
Programs needed (included in this archive):-
* Horizon.exe (2.2.2.0)
* XDBF Entry Tool (1.2.0.0)
You will also need a 1GB to 16GB flash drive formatted with FAT 32. For more information regarding using flash drives on your Xbox 360 check the information at...
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/accessories/usb-flash-drive.
The Fix
1) Go to the Xbox 360 dashboard and go to settings. Scroll down to "Storage" and select your hard drive or internal memory (wherever you store your gamer profile). Go to the "Gamer Profile" directory and move your broken profile to a usb flash drive.
2) Horizon is used to get access to the Mass Effect 3 specific profile data and XDBF Entry Tool is used to edit the gpd file to remove the corrupted entries. XDBF stands for Xbox DataBase File for reference.
3) Open Horizon, go to Tools > Device Explorer. It should find your flash drive. BEFORE YOU START YOU SHOULD BACK UP YOUR PROFILE. Right click on the broken profile and select "Extract". Save the file somewhere safe as this will be a FULL BACKUP COPY of your profile in case you should make a mistake.
4) Now we need to extract the Mass Effect 3 specific file for XDBF Entry Tool to fix. Double click the broken profile in Horizon and it will pop up a little dialogue window. This will show your profile details. Make sure that the top line of the box has your gamertag visible. DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING HERE. Click "Contents" on the second line to display all of the game package files in the profile. We're looking for the Mass Effect 3 package, which is 4541095D.gpd. Right click this, select extract, and also back up the extracted file somewhere (just to be sure).
5) We are finished with Horizon for now but leave it open where extracted the gpd file. Load up XDBF Entry Tool and open 4541095D.gpd (File > Open). Scroll down to the bottom of the middle screen and you should see a few items that say "Setting" under the namespace column. To the left you will see the Entry name for whatever you select. We're looking for the settings with Entry names "TitleSpecific1, TitleSpecific2, and you might have a TitleSpecific3. Right click these and select "Extract", and save them in a safe place as well.
6) Once you have saved these entries, right click each one in XDBF again and choose "Remove" (that is, TitleSpecific1, TitleSpecific2 and TitleSpecific3).
7) Go to tools (the top line of the program) and select "Rebuild GPD". Save this with the same filename as the original GPD, which is 4541095D.gpd. We are now finished with XDBF.
8) Now that we have the modified GPD, go back to Horizon and right click the 4541095D.gpd inside the profile. Choose "Replace". This will replace it with the modifed version, then must click the red "Save, Resign, Rehash".
9) Once save is complete you can place the flash drive back in Xbox and power up. You can now move your profile back to the HDD or Internal Xbox storage. You should be able to play ME3 with your profile. It will recreate the removed portions of the .gpd and you can even load your gamesaves. However, achievement process WILL be reset. Counters such as kills toward Veteran, melee kills, levels toward the Peak Condition achievement.. anything with a counter will be reset. Also any bonus powers you had unlocked will not be available in the medical bay until you unlock them again.
10) Enjoy Mass Effect 3 single AND multi-player... and no, you WON'T have lost any multi-player equipment either.
Resante (with a few changes by EG NeoMorph)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
IMPORTANT NOTE! IMPORTANT NOTE! IMPORTANT NOTE! IMPORTANT NOTE!
DO NOT MESS WITH ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE CORRUPTED THREE FILES (TitleSpecific1, TitleSpecific2 and TitleSpecific3) THAT NEED TO BE REMOVED. It's tempting to alter your achievements but DON'T DO IT. We were forced by Bioware into doing this fix because paying so much for a game and then not being able to play it is worse than torture for us gamers.
NeoMorph
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So you just enjoy crapping on anything people find enjoyable today or something?
No, you misunderstand what and why I am posting. I did not clearly and concisely state why Providence should be kept far away from the Mass Effect IP. Thus haphazard amounts of information and some anger are present in this thread. On the bright side, at least it was informative.