Hitman Episode Two Update Breaks DirectX 12 Support

[btarunr]

The latest update for the episodic "Hitman" game (version 1.1.2) breaks support for DirectX 12 on the PC platform. Released earlier this week, the update introduces players to the second episode based in the Medeterranean setting of Sapienza. We found that after the update, the game simply refused to start. We took advantage of the external settings tool to do some trial-and-error work.

The topmost setting, which lets you select between DirectX 12 (our original setting) and DirectX 11, fixed the issue, when we switched to the latter. We even swapped graphics cards between GeForce GTX 970 SLI (our original setup), GTX 970 single-card (NVIDIA driver 364.96), and Radeon R9 290 (AMD driver 16.4.2). Neither setups worked. A stroll through the Internet reveals that multiple other players are facing this issue. Has Square Enix done absolutely no play-testing in DirectX 12?



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Darksword]

Why bother paying actual staff when you can just use the public as un-paid beta testers?

 

[Caring1]

Why bother paying actual staff when you can just use the public as un-paid beta testers?

It's called customer feedback.
Something they would rather have prior to official release to the consumer.
Sadly this was an update release, not a beta in testing.

 

[RejZoR]

People actually play this episodic nonsense? It worked with The Walking Dead because it's also episodic on TV. But Hitman should stay a single buy game...

 

[the54thvoid]

Ah, DX12, the future of gaming.

Like a lot of people have said, we might have W10 and DX12 but it doesn't mean it's being incorporated into games properly.

I'm guessing it's this sort of game breaking crap that pushed the next Deus Ex game back so they could code it properly?

 

[H82LUZ73]

I can confirm this is broken ,just tried it in DX12 like an hour ago.And this update was supposed to have Win8.1 DX11 and Win 10 DX12 fixes,I guess they really did not test it at all.Shame too i upgraded to 10 to play this now i cant,right back to when i installed the game on 8.1

 

[spectatorx]

People actually play this episodic nonsense? It worked with The Walking Dead because it's also episodic on TV. But Hitman should stay a single buy game...

I love borderlands series, i share this love with my gf and we completed borderlands 1, 2 and pre-sequel, in 1 and 2 we have 100% steam achievements done, in pre-sequel we will have 100% soon but when tales from the borderlands was released... we both watched it on youtube and we both have no need to buy it as we both claim that tv series should be watched, not be faking to be played and this series from telltale has no gameplay at all. Pressing left arrow key or right arrow key in specific moment is not a gameplay.

 

[RejZoR]

But that's different. The Walking Dead from Telltale was one of most immersive emotional experiences I've ever played. And it is, like you said, basically an interactive TV series. You just role along the story, actively participating and altering tiny details. Hitman on the other hand has always been a full gameplay mission based game. You could split up missions episodically, but I just don't know. Doesn't seem to make much sense.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Ah, DX12, the future of gaming.

Like a lot of people have said, we might have W10 and DX12 but it doesn't mean it's being incorporated into games properly.

I'm guessing it's this sort of game breaking crap that pushed the next Deus Ex game back so they could code it properly?

I agree heartily. It's the kind of thing why I said we would be well into 2016 before we had any REAL DX12 games, and the reason Pascal would likely take its time appearing as well.

 

[john_]

They did some testing on Guru3D, so maybe it is half broken. On AMD cards they say it works great, but Nvidia cards is another story

Hitman 2016: PC graphics performance benchmark review - DirectX 12: graphics card performance Full HD & WHQD & UHD

Performance on Nvidia cards reminds how AMD cards are doing in GameBrokenWorks titles.

 

[Xzibit]

They did some testing on Guru3D, so maybe it is half broken. On AMD cards they say it works great, but Nvidia cards is another story

Hitman 2016: PC graphics performance benchmark review - DirectX 12: graphics card performance Full HD & WHQD & UHD

Performance on Nvidia cards reminds how AMD cards are doing in GameBrokenWorks titles.

Look at that Titan-fall

 

[Fluffmeister]

I would have thought AMD cards would have had more of an advantage than that, but once again it's Hawaii that shines even relative to Fiji.

That game has less than stella reviews anyway.... so meh.

 

[looniam]

Look at that Titan-fall

no, THIS is a titan fall:

 

[Fluffmeister]

That's conservative clocks for ya, I see the stock 980 Ti doing dandy there though.

 

[raghu78]

Looks like AMD GE titles have also started resembling Nvidia Gameworks titles at launch - buggy, unstable and pretty much broken. Sad state of affairs for PC gaming.

 

[the54thvoid]

At least AMD have fixed their crossfire problems.

 

[semitope]

Looks like AMD GE titles have also started resembling Nvidia Gameworks titles at launch - buggy, unstable and pretty much broken. Sad state of affairs for PC gaming.

its not a ge title afaik.

 

[okidna]

its not a ge title afaik.

It's a Gaming Evolved title : https://hitman.com/en-us#

 

[semitope]

oh right. I was thinking about ashes. If the dx11 version is not broken then the accusation is not quite fair. Its down to the new API and developers figuring it out. Its probably secondary unfortunately since they have dx11 already and its episodic. I mention episodic because they are actively developing the game between each release. Not like other games where its released and mostly being patched after. Hence why the second episode can be broken. The whole game is not out yet.

This seems kinda like steam early access honestly.

 

[newtekie1]

People actually play this episodic nonsense? It worked with The Walking Dead because it's also episodic on TV. But Hitman should stay a single buy game...

Any episodic game I just wait until all the episodes are out, and then buy it. I usually get a deal that way too.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

put it simple... Enix did not do their jobs properly & assume that without testing the patch prior to launch will make things go smoothly. as expected from a company that makes console games that only know how to wait for money to fall from the sky...

 

[Sempron Guy]

lol so it's AMD's fault now that Nvidia has no support for asynchronous compute? Gameworks is implemented by Nvidia, DX12 is an api. It's neither AMDs or Nvidias. It just so happen AMD gambled on async compute and now reaping on its benefits and Nvidia didn't. And if you think GE is the same cancer as Gameworks is, then you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[truth teller]

yet another fine example of 21 century game development...
if you cant into in-house testing dont release something without a beta tag
if you cant into dx12 dont provide the option for it
half assed solutions after having already taken the shekels from your customers is only going to make your company look bad. and people will remember who is in charge of it when shit happens, the stigma will follow you everywhere

 

[uuuaaaaaa]

lol so it's AMD's fault now that Nvidia has no support for asynchronous compute? Gameworks is implemented by Nvidia, DX12 is an api. It's neither AMDs or Nvidias. It just so happen AMD gambled on async compute and now reaping on its benefits and Nvidia didn't. And if you think GE is the same cancer as Gameworks is, then you have no idea what you're talking about.

AMD did not gamble on Async. Console games are made to take out of the most of the "poor" console hardware, and it so happens that AMD dominates the console market hardware wise (current and next gen), so it makes sense to make games optimized for GCN that take advantage of async.

 

[BiggieShady]

Gotta love low level APIs that give extra couple of frames per second and break game with the next content update ... devs are used to monolithic dx11 where driver knows the hardware so you don't need extensive testing after every content update once the engine is tested enough.
What happened here is a great example of low level api being a double edged sword.