General Next Generation Rumors and Discussions [Post GDC 2020]
- Thread starter BRiT
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I suppose it is the difference between:
1) Booting game to start menu, show game logos and skip various intros + (a few clicks in) choose which save game to load + wait a short period of time for the game to load
or
2) Wait 5-6 seconds for the game to resume from where you left it.
1) Booting game to start menu, show game logos and skip various intros + (a few clicks in) choose which save game to load + wait a short period of time for the game to load
or
2) Wait 5-6 seconds for the game to resume from where you left it.
Yes. That's the basis of good UI design, minimising the number hoops a person has to go through to do what they want. It's the difference between Disney Life having no 'continue watching' option so you have to find your programme manually (a search in lots of cases) followed by fast forwarding to where you were, versus Disney+ where you just go down to 'Continue Watching'. Despite being only a matter of seconds of wasted time, I wouldn't use Disney Plus because the interface was so stupidly lame.
It's also the difference in experience between having 'continue watching' on the top or near for your streaming service, versus having it randomly repositioned in the list and the frustrating in having to go looking.
If there is no need for annoyance and frustration, it should be sensibly removed from the experience to make for happy users. One button to carry on instead multiple steps to find your game, load it, and click continue, will be welcome.
Also, load times are still going to be a number of seconds as previously described with loading assets just being a small part of the load process. Instantiating the objects and game state also takes time. Saving that world state to storage mean you can have 2 second resumes (just dumping the state from storage) versus maybe 30 for a full from-scratch load.
Long loading times are one thing, but 3-10 steps with buttons, several different screens (with their own loading time because those are complex screens) to continue the main save should not happen at all. It's a bad design.
At worse there should be one simple screen (quickly loaded plz a 2D background will be enough) with a list of modes: continue, new game, selection of MP modes, options etc. We boot the game, in 2 seconds we select what we want to play and we start the loading.
Take Silent Hill 1 on PS1. Sure the loading is quite long, but the main save is automatically loaded when you boot the game, which was awesome. From there it only got worse.
At worse there should be one simple screen (quickly loaded plz a 2D background will be enough) with a list of modes: continue, new game, selection of MP modes, options etc. We boot the game, in 2 seconds we select what we want to play and we start the loading.
Take Silent Hill 1 on PS1. Sure the loading is quite long, but the main save is automatically loaded when you boot the game, which was awesome. From there it only got worse.
I understand that but most cases in games is going to be click on app and then click on continue, that's it.
Jason Schreier also had this post.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/so...iles-presented-in-ps5-os.177106/post-30207023
Which kind of sounds like a replacement for suspend and resume maybe?
Wouldn't not having suspend on resume save space on the NVME ? Also less writes?
"Also, load times are still going to be a number of seconds as previously described with loading assets just being a small part of the load process. Instantiating the objects and game state also takes time. Saving that world state to storage mean you can have 2 second resumes (just dumping the state from storage) versus maybe 30 for a full from-scratch load."
;-)
Then Cerney has been lying because I'm sure he wouldn't think 30 seconds is instant loads.
I'm pretty sure he said during the deep dive thing that he expects loads to be like 1-2 seconds.
How can he be lying, it will totally depend on what game/what has to be loaded and where. Some games might not have any loading at all, some may load in 2 seconds, some in 10s or longer. It could also depend on what the developers are trying to do.
Load times are hugely variable. Some vast open worlds with lots to populate will take longer to load. Having load times in the 1-2 seconds isn't a promise that all games will load in that time, but a sort of expectation. It'd be the same as saying load times on PS3 would be in the 30-40 seconds realm, while some games take five minutes. Suspend/resume means all games take a couple of seconds to get playing, and provides a simple interface for devs. Although I am curious about the power-down time. It'll take time to write that data and we don't have write speeds. I suppose that'll take however long it takes while powering down to 'sleep'.
It's not about filling RAM. Loading a scene means loading the models and textures and data from storage, and then building the memory structures in RAM to represent the different objects. The processor has to do a lot of work. Once those data structures are complete, you can dump a copy of the RAM to SSD and then restore it in under 3 seconds.
Yes and yes, but you also have far more assets (we hope) and more complex worlds. You can't stream actual game objects, only the pieces needed to assemble those game objects. You also can't expect all games to use the best possible practices. Longer load times for more complex worlds are almost a certainty. I don't imagine Bethesda's next-gen Elder Scrolls to load in two seconds.
I kind of do though. We will see though if Sony use instant loading in there marketing. Because if they do and some next gen games take 30 seconds to load that's a bad look.
Most games probably won't take that long to load on the new consoles. Feels like a game that will load in 30 seconds will be an out-lier.
No more than '1080p' console on machines that ended up with sub-HD games. Expect really quick load on early titles, and then longer load times on later games as the hardware gets stretched. Unless you can come up with a solution to the need for processing to build game content from the asset pieces on the storage?
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