Dark Souls PC (Buyer Beware)

J0dy77

Member
Picked up Dark Souls for the PC with the intention of playing it without the latency and improved graphics (originally played on the PS3). The game just runs awfully, it's hardly even playable... throw on top the "Games for Windows Live" and it's a real mess. Game seems to have a lot of input lag with the gamepad as well. Wanted to warn people that were on the fence about the purchase.

Anyone have any suggestions for improvement outside of the DSfix tool?

Edit: I appreciate the feedback. Playing around with DSfix has improved the experience and the graphics and input lag are gone (enjoying the experience now). Definitely a very lazy port, the fact that it requires a community mod to make the game playable and there is no built in way to adjust controller settings should be noted for people looking to purchase the game.
 
I have a kind of crap computer and the game runs perfectly and runs beastly with DSfix. No idea what the problem could be there.
 
If you don't want greatly improved rendering resolution (for whatever reason), try using DSfix just to uncap the FPS and run it at 60.
 
Try to turn off vsync, it helps a lot with the gamepad input lag. You have tearing in return, but the input lag is just way too bad with vsync on.

And I'm not the kind of person who turns it off for every single game, in fact I do the exact opposite, but with Dark Souls I just can't.
 
I'm 20 hours in, only using DSfix and it's been wonderfull no serious problems at all. Even GFWL has been completely silent and non-intrusive.
 
Why would you even bother buying this game without considering dsfix's availability?

Also which gamepad are you using? Wired 360 pad?

edit: Agreed w/ disabling vysnc for this one.
 
The port obviosly has problems, but I wouldn't say that performance or responsiveness are part of them. In fact, especially with the framerate unlock it's excellent in those areas.
 
There are a lot of people with experience with both the console and PC versions. The improvements after DSFix, outside of the invading/coop networking issues, are profound.
 
make sure you unlock the framerate and then cap it to whatever you want.

The game has a shitty method of framelimiting otherwise. Blighttown would routinely drop to 15fps without the DSfix fps unlock. When i unlocked the framerate and capped it at 30fps, blightown stayed at 30fps.
 
I also didn't have any problems with it. It's working great with DSfix, and didn't noticed any input lag with my wireless X360 controller.

I suck at it, but that's not the games fault.
 
The port obviosly has problems, but I wouldn't say that performance or responsiveness are part of them. In fact, especially with the framerate unlock it's excellent in those areas.

Durante, a kind Gaffer just gifted me DS a couple of days ago, I applied your fix and the game runs like a dream, I just want to tell you I love you man, thank you for giving us the way to play this awesome game like it was meant to be played.
 
I got the game and I'm having graphic issues and controller input lag as well.

I'll see about looking into this DSfix that I hear people talking about so much. I just thought it was me but I did always hate how when I press the attack button he would either take a while to attack, or attack twice. I hope it fixes it because the game is super enjoyable.
 
This port is so shit that it actually offends me. Every time I hear about it I have an urge to boycott all From Software games.

They are apparently leading on PC with the next version. I got over the half assed port after DSFix addressed virtually every issue. For everything else they did poorly at least it is very stable.

I got the game and I'm having graphic issues and controller input lag as well.

I'll see about looking into this DSfix that I hear people talking about so much. I just thought it was me but I did always hate how when I press the attack button he would either take a while to attack, or attack twice. I hope it fixes it because the game is super enjoyable.

Honestly, DSfix is absolutely essential.
 
I got the game and I'm having graphic issues and controller input lag as well.

I'll see about looking into this DSfix that I hear people talking about so much. I just thought it was me but I did always hate how when I press the attack button he would either take a while to attack, or attack twice. I hope it fixes it because the game is super enjoyable.

DSfix is a must, do not even consider playing the game without it.
 
Lucky for you OP, I can't even get mine to open after I downloaded it from Steam. I gave up on it. I already played it before but wanted to try it on PC and get to the new content.
 
The port obviosly has problems, but I wouldn't say that performance or responsiveness are part of them. In fact, especially with the framerate unlock it's excellent in those areas.

I'd say performance is easily one of the games worse problems, it's just that so many people have such strong computers that they don't realize it. Dark Souls should be running in the hundreds of fps on strong computers, but the performance just isn't there even disregarding the animation problems. On my older dual core + radeon 5850 computer Dark Souls ran worse than Crysis.
 
:lol Are people still shocked it's a bad port? From stated for months before release it was going to be a bad port. And then it released and "ZOMG WTF FROM" from PC gamers happened. They told you man.

intheinbetween said:
lazy port fixed by durante and his DSFix

Basically, yeah.
 
Anyone having issues launching the game? Played it perfectly fine the first time around but now nothing happens whenever I try to run it.
 
One of the things I overlooked initially with the DSfix is that you have to use the DSfix file to change the resolution; the setting in the game still does nothing.
 
I'd say performance is easily one of the games worse problems, it's just that so many people have such strong computers that they don't realize it. Dark Souls should be running in the hundreds of fps on strong computers, but the performance just isn't there even disregarding the animation problems. On my older dual core + radeon 5850 computer Dark Souls ran worse than Crysis.
Did you try before or after the official patch? It significantly improved the CPU performance of the game. Before the patch, it was cause for concern but now I'd say it lines up with expectations in that regard.

Anyone having issues launching the game? Played it perfectly fine the first time around but now nothing happens whenever I try to run it.
This is probably a GFWL issue. Open the task manager and kill the GFWL process.
 
Did you try before or after the official patch? It significantly improved the CPU performance of the game. Before the patch, it was cause for concern but now I'd say it lines up with expectations in that regard.

This is probably a GFWL issue. Open the task manager and kill the GFWL process.

I'll try this but I doubt that's my issue. When I click "play" on Steam it opens on my 2nd monitor but it's not centered, it's like down and to the right. It proceeds to crash immediately.
 
Zero issues thanks to based Durante.
But let's forget that the 23 minutes version 0.1 still downsampled everything to 1280x720 and cut off half the text :P

Oh stop it :p

You freaking rescued that game. That 23 minutes was the decision on if I never bought that game or paid full price.

I bought the game literally 2 hours after that thread was posted.
 
OP hasn't come back to reply or elaborate on his complaints after half an hour. I think it's safe to say this is just a hit-and-run shit-thread.
 
They should have just approached you and asked your permission to make it an official patch. I feel the major problem here is that many more casual pc gamers would look at something like DSfix and see it as a separate download on some non official website and go "It must not be mandatory" or see it as some weird mod.

Probably what OP and tons of others are going through with so many new people buying the game from the summer sales. DSfix is practically mandatory unless you're a masochist.
 
I'll try this but I doubt that's my issue. When I click "play" on Steam it opens on my 2nd monitor but it's not centered, it's like down and to the right. It proceeds to crash immediately.

It always opens down and to the right for me as well, but then goes full screen.
 
This is probably a GFWL issue. Open the task manager and kill the GFWL process.

My issue is something to do with this. I start it and it immediately closes. Then if you try and load again it says its already running.

Do I Close GFWL this way after I have tried loading it?
 
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