{"id":51959,"date":"2023-06-05T17:53:18","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T12:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themakoreactor.com\/?p=51959"},"modified":"2023-06-05T18:47:19","modified_gmt":"2023-06-05T13:17:19","slug":"ph3-interview-peter-durante-thoman-on-japanese-pc-ports-working-with-falcom-games-steam-deck-optimization-switch-ports-and-a-lot-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themakoreactor.com\/features\/ph3-interview-peter-durante-thoman-on-japanese-pc-ports-working-with-falcom-games-steam-deck-optimization-switch-ports-and-a-lot-more\/51959\/","title":{"rendered":"PH3 Interview \u2013 Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman on Japanese PC Ports, Working With Falcom Games, Steam Deck Optimization, Switch Ports, and a Lot More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anyone who has played a Falcom game on PC in the last few years likely knows about PH3<\/a>. PH3, founded in 2018, has been responsible for some of the best PC conversions ever with those Falcom releases, but many likely know of PH3 and Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman thanks to Dark Souls on PC. The journey from Dark Souls to offering to help Koei Tecmo with Atelier games on PC and now PH3 even doing PC ports of games for the Japanese audience while also working on Switch ports has been interesting to follow. For my latest interview<\/a>, I’ve been talking to Peter Thoman who most people know as ‘Durante’ about working with Falcom, the Steam Deck, PH3’s Nintendo Switch conversions, the state of PC ports, and a lot more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From modding Dark Souls on PC to founding PH3<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I was curious about the origins of PH3 and how Peter got involved with doing PC ports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I guess the most important part of the story starts with Dark Souls,” Peter says. “I enjoyed Demon’s Souls on PS3, but couldn’t play it with my friends on PC — which was and is also generally my preferred platform, so I was really excited when the PC port of that was campaigned for, eventually announced. This was when I was still a PhD student in computer science, and while that takes up a lot of time it is quite flexible in how you decide to distribute that time. So when the rumors that the port would have a locked rendering resolution turned out to be true, I decided to work on it, and I could put a lot of focus on it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That mod obviously absolutely exploded in popularity, and I went on to do a few more mods in a similar vein, e.g. for Final Fantasy XIII and Deadly Premonition (that in particular was a wild ride!), though none of them reached the same level of popularity,” he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Little King’s Story on Steam from Xseed Games<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Little King’s Story on PC from Xseed Games was his first professional work on a game port after fixing many games through his mods.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A few years later, I was contacted by XSEED Games<\/a> asking whether I could help out with the issues of the PC port of Little King’s Story,” Peter Says. “Unlike prior instances of similar questions, in this case they were actually willing to give me source access to the game, and that was my first ‘professional’ work on a game port.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That led to him being responsible for the PC versions of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel and Trails of Cold Steel II.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I went on to work with XSEED on Trails of Cold Steel and Trails of Cold Steel II for PC as well, and while I only joined mid-way in the porting of Trails of Cold Steel, I implemented the entire port for Trails of Cold Steel II,” he says. “At that point I was still working alone, though for Trails of Cold Steel II that already wasn’t working out perfectly and I subcontracted some help. As such, when two other coworkers (still at University at this point) floated the idea of founding a company, I was quite happy to join.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, originally PH3 wasn’t really focused on games at all, but more on similar things to what we did during our studies — high performance computing and optimization. We now actually do have ongoing projects in both of those areas, but in the first two years PH3 was almost exclusively working on PC (and later also Switch) ports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel on PC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Durante’s thoughts on Falcom games<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“Working on Falcom games is great, since they are one of the few smaller-scale Japanese developers who are still independently creating some fantastic games, and I love being able to provide great PC versions of them for everyone,” Peter says. “Though I have to say that, at this point, I’m way behind on my own Trails play-through — these are long and involved games, and after working on them I need a break from them until I really want to spend too much time playing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the state of Atelier PC ports<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Regarding Atelier, sadly it never quite worked out for us to get to work on them. At least the PC ports are now better than they used to be, though there is still some low-hanging fruit in terms of PC porting and adaptation left on the table. The most recent Atelier I completed was Firis DX just earlier in the year. I had never played that one and was curious why it is considered one of the more controversial entries among fans. I understand that now, though I think it has some really neat ideas and is more interesting, systems-wise, than Ryza, which is the most chronologically recent game I played in the franchise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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