The Callisto Protocol (survival/horror)

What is going on with the fire in this game? It looks like its animating at 20 fps and looks a bit blurry too. It really stands out against the rest of the graphics.
 
Good to hear the patch works the coders must be God. I'll pick it up again going to see what the Steam Forums are like in the morning.
 
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It helps quite a bit but it still has drops and stutters and that is without ray tracing at only 1440p with a 3080 ti. I even see drops into the upper 30s on occasion for seemingly no reason. Ray tracing tanks my framerate in spots but its not my gpu as it also drops in usage when the framerate drops.

I requested a refund as I am not paying full price for a 9 hour game with technical issues.
 
Armenius said:
The game seems fantastic in my short time with it so far, but the performance issues are absolutely ridiculous. Nothing I do can get the game running smoothly on the PC in my signature. The lighting system is something else, and I would love to be able to run the game with all of it turned up to 11. This is why I am always hesitant about UE4 games. Going to play it on my Series X, for now.

You can have the game auto complete all QTEs in the accessibility options. I turned it on, myself. QTEs in 2022 are inexcusable. If an action can't be completed by the player through the course of normal gameplay, then it shouldn't be in the game.

Since we're on NVIDIA cards the utilization issue may be fixed by a driver update. At least I am hoping. The load hitches won't be fixed by that, but hopefully the stuttering will.
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I agree.. QTE's are just awful...I don't mind if they include them for people that like them.. But there 100% needs to be an option to remove/complete them auto. So glad to hear this.. And now the stuttering is gone.. ill be buying this game probably during winter sale.
 
Dion said:
I agree.. QTE's are just awful...I don't mind if they include them for people that like them.. But there 100% needs to be an option to remove/complete them auto. So glad to hear this.. And now the stuttering is gone.. ill be buying this game probably during winter sale.
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The stuttering is most certainly not gone.
 
The patch works. But I can see performance left on the table. I would like more options for graphics so those people can tweak to their desires.

I really don't like how it's a "surprise" to them about performance (I am sure the project engineers knew, but were tied to other higher priority tasks to ship). Anyone who does development/QA knows this issue would have been seen/known well before release. Consoles have to pass a bar before published, PC is left to the publisher to decide. Developers bank too hard on day-1 patches and review embargos.

Don't lie. Just say you knew, had to push for a same-day release for all platforms (marketing?) and was already working on a patch for PC. Then say sorry and keep communication honest and open.

I see another patch on the way.

It still is a pretty game. Decent for the money. Set dressing looks awesome, environment kits are varied and versitile. Characters look good. A lot of details.

The only reason this was first day purchase is because of the environments/lighting and tied heavily to my current job, or I'd have waited.
 
I saved 10.00 on my Steam Wallet and bought the Deluxe Edition the Standard Edition and the DLC is an Extra 10.00.
Downloading this takes me about 12 hour or so...
 
Screenshot_20221203-095912.png

Nowinstock even has a tracker
 
For the folks that have it, what's the general opinion on performance now? Is is mostly fixed?
Also, anyone seen any type of discount? I checked all of the major key sites and it's still only like $0.50 off.
 
It's mostly fixed. Nvidia cards really need a proper driver, which i'm hoping will fix some of the remaining performance issues. However, a big issue here is just UE4 I think not being able to deal with all of this extra shit slapped on, like raytracing, properly. The game is very CPU limited, and raytracing only adds to that. The engine just can't deal with this stuff properly like some more modern games like DL2. I doubt it will ever truly be 'fixed'. If you enable raytracing you're largely capped to a certain FPS that your CPU is able to handle. Turning down resolution achieves nothing as the same CPU bottleneck is there. I notice similar behavior with raytracing in Gotham Knights, which has very similar performance issues with UE4 + raytracing.

However, ultimately, the game is largely fine now. There are still some stutters, but it's not nearly as bad like before where the game was 100% unplayable on PC.

I also noticed the latest patch fixed some of the loading crash issues on PC as well.
 
Comixbooks said:
View attachment 531504

Nowinstock even has a tracker
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Thanks for giving us insight into your web browsing habits. Can't say I'm surprised.
Domingo said:
For the folks that have it, what's the general opinion on performance now? Is is mostly fixed?
Also, anyone seen any type of discount? I checked all of the major key sites and it's still only like $0.50 off.
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"Mostly" is a good term to use. It still regularly stutters, but they don't get in the way of gameplay most of the time. I played for 4 hours straight this morning and ran into one area where the game just froze for a whole 30 seconds while it loaded an in-game story element. Audio kept playing, but no frames were being generated. I'm enjoying it now. The game feels more like Doom 3 in a weird way than it does Dead Space with the way maps and exploration are setup.
 
this prison has the worst fucking security doors i've ever seen

door locked -> pry open and cut ribbon cable in seconds
gigantic metal door -> finger sized gap that lets you pull it open by hand in seconds
 
I did my 2 hours and got a refund. Even if the game had no tech issues, I would still not have been impressed.

It is hilarious how many clowns on steam forums claim the game runs "perfect" and has no issues at all. Even at launch before the patch there were people claiming that. And so many people lying about performance such as people with mid range cards claiming to run all max settings at 1440p at 100 fps. I have come to the conclusion that a large percentage of pc gamers are just oblivious idiots.
 
jobert said:
I did my 2 hours and got a refund. Even if the game had no tech issues, I would still not have been impressed.

It is hilarious how many clowns on steam forums claim the game runs "perfect" and has no issues at all. Even at launch before the patch there were people claiming that. And so many people lying about performance such as people with mid range cards claiming to run all max settings at 1440p at 100 fps. I have come to the conclusion that a large percentage of pc gamers are just oblivious idiots.
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Yeah, and there is still some weird shader cache stutter in certain areas, it’s like it didn’t get included with the script.
 
Mchart said:
Yeah, and there is still some weird shader cache stutter in certain areas, it’s like it didn’t get included with the script.
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Some of the remaining stutter may not have much if anything to do with shader compiling. It still stutters in DX11 which I assume does not even use that. As I said earlier at least 75% of unreal engine games have some type of stutter regardless of what API is even used. I can even fire up an old unreal engine 3 DX9 game and see issues. Back then people always thought they needed to throw more hardware at it but games that run like shit tend to always run like shit. We have just come to the point where so many people have low standards and/or they are completely oblivious to most issues.
 
in the future we have the power to lift men with a magic gauntlet

secured, locked containers however have still yet to evolve to the point that a sharpened wrench cannot instantly open them
jobert said:
Some of the remaining stutter may not have much if anything to do with shader compiling. It still stutters in DX11 which I assume does not even use that. As I said earlier at least 75% of unreal engine games have some type of stutter regardless of what API is even used. I can even fire up an old unreal engine 3 DX9 game and see issues. Back then people always thought they needed to throw more hardware at it but games that run like shit tend to always run like shit.
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somehow only epic and the gears of war devs can make unreal engine games that don't stutter like shit
 
jobert said:
And in how many games has Denuvo actually been proven to cause stuttering? If you're worried about stuttering then it's likely to come from the unreal engine that has stutter in over 3/4 of the games that use it.
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You're correct. I was confusing denuvo and ue 4 shader compiler impacts.
 
Well even though I refunded, I bought it again having seen feedback from patch 1 solving the stuttering. The single threaded CPU limitation is said to be being worked on (further optimisations) and will be patched in "coming days" the devs say. I will give them benefit of the doubt but at least the stuttering is fixed and I can actually play somewhat properly with ray tracing reflections (which makes a noticeable difference).

Will report back once I've had a quick go post-patch.
 
robbiekhan said:
Well even though I refunded, I bought it again having seen feedback from patch 1 solving the stuttering. The single threaded CPU limitation is said to be being worked on (further optimisations) and will be patched in "coming days" the devs say. I will give them benefit of the doubt but at least the stuttering is fixed and I can actually play somewhat properly with ray tracing reflections (which makes a noticeable difference).

Will report back once I've had a quick go post-patch.
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If it was a game that could give you dozens of hours then I would understand keeping it and playing around a little while waiting for more patches. It is an 8 to 10 hour completely linear single player game with no real replayability so I am not spending my money to get anything other than the best experience for my paythrough.
 
jobert said:
If it was a game that could give you dozens of hours then I would understand keeping it and playing around a little while waiting for more patches. It is an 8 to 10 hour completely linear single player game with no real replayability so I am not spending my money to get anything other than the best experience for my paythrough.
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That pretty much describes dead space too though and many other survival horror games. All the Res Evil remakes of late, Alien Isolation, bunch of others. All linear with no additional exploration, but lots of immersion in the story and set pieces.
 
So far this game is not really as scary as I thought it would be, it's like the combat is so frenetic that you're gettin fuckin amped up rather than feeling like you're fighting for your life. Lots of cheap jumpscare attempts.

Also hilariously I hurled an enemy out of the playable area... and they immediately sprinted to a vent in the floor, jumped in, and popped out of another vent near me 2 seconds later. It was like watching someone vent in Among Us.

edit: I've gone through like 5 vents in the last 15 minutes and heard "what the hell was that" almost as many times.
 
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robbiekhan said:
That pretty much describes dead space too though and many other survival horror games. All the Res Evil remakes of late, Alien Isolation, bunch of others. All linear with no additional exploration, but lots of immersion in the story and set pieces.
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You seem to have missed the whole point. This is a one and done game for me so I am not going to spend my money and either get a crappy experience or wait around for no telling how many patches. I have seen many cases where a game will even go on a huge discount before it has been fixed.

And not that it matters in the context here but Alien Isolation is probably at least twice as long as this game and has lots of exploration.
 
I'm starting to think they use vents to hide loading or some shit, they're fucking everywhere.

Smething tries to jump scare me in a room full of liquid shit, and then I crawl through a vent that I opened with a valve for some reason, which in turn leads me to a room with... another vent. Couple rooms later... vent time.

I'm not super impressed with the level design so far. Find door that needs a fuse that's actually just around the corner because I guess they needed a way to soak up 3 minutes of your time and hoped it would multiply when they do it 20x over the course of the game. Probably get jumpscared within 5 steps of you grabbing it. Probably crawl through a vent shortly after.
 
So the patch also fixed FSR not working. With all ray tracing enabled and the Ultra Preset, the game is now smooth and playable with FSR Performance. In Quality/Balanced the framerate is a little lower, but Performance mode I find more usable for quick movements etc. Also note the frametime line on the higher FSR modes, Performance mode has the flattest frametime line in scenes like this.

Examples:

FSR Quality:
stoProtocol-Win64-Shipping_2022_12_04_04_43_33_757.jpg


FSR Balanced:
stoProtocol-Win64-Shipping_2022_12_04_04_39_46_474.jpg


FSR Performance:
stoProtocol-Win64-Shipping_2022_12_04_04_33_18_019.jpg


No FSR, no Temporal AI:
stoProtocol-Win64-Shipping_2022_12_04_04_37_55_394.jpg


The framerate range with just Temporal AI enabled is not much different to no upscale at all (the last one above), so I didn't bother screenshotting that.

Post-patch gameplay:

 
I went and replayed Dead Space 2008. 30 minutes in I had more fun than 2 hrs into Callisto.

I'll probably pick it if they Winter Sale it.
 
The atmosphere in this game is second to none. Although the fire is definitely the worst rendered stuff in the game.

This is a pic of a red beacon in HDR in the game lighting up my dark room with the Samsung S95B OLED. This display and game were made for one another and an epic experience.
 

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Glen Schofield on the stutterring fix: "A wrong file was patched", he said. "Just freakin error by someone rushing." He also referred to it as "a clerical error", and said that, "It's launch day, this happens unfortunately. This is Krafton's 1st sp, console game so we're basically doing everything ourselves like a startup. I apologize"
 
I don't really believe it TBH. The way they implemented the shader caching stuff is very last minute and poorly done. There isn't even a progress slider, and it just locks up the main menu for like a minute. It's better than nothing, but the lack of quality on the PC port is just glaring.

They should have waited a few months for the PC release, but I guess they knew people would cancel pre-orders for a game like this if they had to delay the PC release.

Of course, releasing it on Steam means people are going to get refunds anyways.

Honestly, they should have waited until Halloween of 2023 to release this game, since they couldn't properly make a 2022 release date. They could have used that time to polish up performance, and expand out on the game in some sections. I feel like the entire first/second chapter portions should have been MUCH longer to build on the character of the game. You can tell it was really rushed. I won't even mention how shit the combat loop is compared to Dead Space, but that would have been tolerable if they would have at least delivered a solid narrative and built up the setting a bit more early on. This is why the first Dead Space is so brilliant - It takes a while in that game to really start getting into consistent combat, and that initial few hours where they build it up is amazing.

The big issue with the horror aspect to this game is that there isn't enough game/content between all the crammed in action/horror sequences to actually scare the player.

Oh well. Really waiting on the Dead Space remake. That will scratch my itch. Haven't played it since release anyways, so it'll basically be like playing the game new again.
 
Vega said:
The atmosphere in this game is second to none.
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I don't know if I fully agree.

The game seems really obsessed with the idea that it needs to always show and never tell, like almost everything spooky has to be super in your face and rarely do they ever leave you to stew in your imagination because you're going to get jump scared or some shit around the next corner.

Like I kind of just want to just walk through these corridors for a few minutes and soak in the things that go bump in the night without having to crawl through a vent, cave something's head in, or go find a fuse that's literally 20 feet away.

Like the game just needs to slow the fuck down for a minute and actually let it be creepy.
Mchart said:
I don't really believe it TBH. The way they implemented the shader caching stuff is very last minute and poorly done. There isn't even a progress slider, and it just locks up the main menu for like a minute. It's better than nothing, but the lack of quality on the PC port is just glaring.

They should have waited a few months for the PC release, but I guess they knew people would cancel pre-orders for a game like this if they had to delay the PC release.

Of course, releasing it on Steam means people are going to get refunds anyways.

Honestly, they should have waited until Halloween of 2023 to release this game, since they couldn't properly make a 2022 release date. They could have used that time to polish up performance, and expand out on the game in some sections. I feel like the entire first/second chapter portions should have been MUCH longer to build on the character of the game. You can tell it was really rushed. I won't even mention how shit the combat loop is compared to Dead Space, but that would have been tolerable if they would have at least delivered a solid narrative and built up the setting a bit more early on. This is why the first Dead Space is so brilliant - It takes a while in that game to really start getting into consistent combat, and that initial few hours where they build it up is amazing.

The big issue with the horror aspect to this game is that there isn't enough game/content between all the crammed in action/horror sequences to actually scare the player.

Oh well. Really waiting on the Dead Space remake. That will scratch my itch. Haven't played it since release anyways, so it'll basically be like playing the game new again.
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Yeah I don't know, whatever shader fix they tried to pull out of their ass is clearly some last minute shit.

The game is pretty fun, but it definitely feels like it needed just a little more. Some stuff just feels like blatant time padding in the most desperate ways to inch up that runtime... which is dumb because all they needed to do was slow down a bit and maybe let me soak in the prison a bit to build it up a bit. It's like they're so worried that _something_ has to be happening at any given moment that you don't get any time to actually soak in the world. Instead they just make the assumption that your ADHD soaked brain cannot possibly cope with any interruption to you needing to brain something with the fun but wonky melee.

Like Amnesia famously and super successfully tricked players into getting in their own head. There is basically none of that here.
 
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socK said:
I don't know if I fully agree.

The game seems really obsessed with the idea that it needs to always show and never tell, like almost everything spooky has to be super in your face and rarely do they ever leave you to stew in your imagination because you're going to get jump scared or some shit around the next corner.
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Ya maybe atmosphere isn't the right word. Maybe world/setting. Just the architecture, ships, hallways, music. All very well done and love the HDR/graphics. I really love worlds/games that have an "Aliens/Event Horizon" type gritty vibe to them.
 
the problem is that some developers equate horror with jump scares...a good horror game/movie is not all about jump scares...reminds me of Doom 3 which relied too much on that instead of building up the atmosphere and setting...the first FEAR game handled the horror aspects well, same with Amnesia: Dark Descent, Outlast etc
 
polonyc2 said:
the problem is that some developers equate horror with jump scares...a good horror game/movie is not all about jump scares...reminds me of Doom 3 which relied too much on that instead of building up the atmosphere and setting...the first FEAR game handled the horror aspects well, same with Amnesia: Dark Descent, Outlast etc
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Ya jump scares are the easy button instead of writing actual scary shit. Just like jump scares is "horror" movies are trash.
 
Vega said:
The atmosphere in this game is second to none. Although the fire is definitely the worst rendered stuff in the game.

This is a pic of a red beacon in HDR in the game lighting up my dark room with the Samsung S95B OLED. This display and game were made for one another and an epic experience.
Click to expand...
 
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polonyc2 said:
the problem is that some developers equate horror with jump scares...a good horror game/movie is not all about jump scares...reminds me of Doom 3 which relied too much on that instead of building up the atmosphere and setting...the first FEAR game handled the horror aspects well, same with Amnesia: Dark Descent, Outlast etc
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These developers knew better. I think it's just down to running out of time. They could only build out all the action sequences in a string together and didn't have time to fill it with proper world building.
 
Mchart said:
These developers knew better. I think it's just down to running out of time. They could only build out all the action sequences in a string together and didn't have time to fill it with proper world building.
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Schofield was also a bit arrogant...he thought that being the main guy behind the original Dead Space would be enough of a selling point for Callisto Protocol...I think a lot of people pre-ordered based on his past success
 
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