Last nite I decided to download and play the Quake4 demo for the x360. I think it was the really subpar framerate that made me motion sick. The last fps that made me that sick was Ken's Labrynth (wolf3d engine) for the 486. I felt so sick I had to lie down and I fell asleep. I can't belive how bad this port was. It seems like it would be a fun game if they had actually spent some time optimizing it. Who the heck dropped the ball on this one.
Quake4 for the 360 makes me sick!
- Thread starter Pozer
- Start date
I can't play a fps at a rate lesser than 60 fps without getting sick.
With very solid rock 30 fps I can play, but not for more than an hour, but I can't with the "droppers"...
Today I've played FEAR and it seemed an awesome game, but was forced to quit playing because of the awful framerate on my girl's laptop. Arg...
Also there is something with the perspective on FEAR that makes me sick. I think it is caused by a very short view angle. They've tried to imitate human sight and rendering on the border gets too much distorted.
A few months ago I programed a veeeery basic rendering engine for the U and I remember how dificult programming a correct camera view was. F*** angles... But I can't stand view management on FEAR, even understanding the issue...
With very solid rock 30 fps I can play, but not for more than an hour, but I can't with the "droppers"...
Today I've played FEAR and it seemed an awesome game, but was forced to quit playing because of the awful framerate on my girl's laptop. Arg...
Also there is something with the perspective on FEAR that makes me sick. I think it is caused by a very short view angle. They've tried to imitate human sight and rendering on the border gets too much distorted.
A few months ago I programed a veeeery basic rendering engine for the U and I remember how dificult programming a correct camera view was. F*** angles... But I can't stand view management on FEAR, even understanding the issue...
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I hear ya. Q4 on the 360 feels like a bad 20fps on average. Jumps to around 30 and back to 15 very quickly. Made me ill within 10 mins. So sad they couldn't get the doom3 engine running at a decent frame rate especially on a tri-core cpu and a advanced gpu.
I have no problem with fear I dont like the upclose viewpoint either. That always makes me feel like Im playing at 640x480 resolution for some reason. Q4's viewpoint is putting the gun down very low. Almost like the gun is pointing toward the ground constantly and lookling thru a slight fish-eye type lense.. Not sure if that was the deal breaker.
I can usually play any fps if the framerate is constantly bad. I've never gotten sick on Halo1/2 for example and PDZ I can play for days on its nice 'feels like 60' fps. Some games with 'head bob' use to give me the sickies. To this day I hate head bob in a fps. It's a cheap trick to make a game more realistic IMO.
I have no problem with fear I dont like the upclose viewpoint either. That always makes me feel like Im playing at 640x480 resolution for some reason. Q4's viewpoint is putting the gun down very low. Almost like the gun is pointing toward the ground constantly and lookling thru a slight fish-eye type lense.. Not sure if that was the deal breaker.
I can usually play any fps if the framerate is constantly bad. I've never gotten sick on Halo1/2 for example and PDZ I can play for days on its nice 'feels like 60' fps. Some games with 'head bob' use to give me the sickies. To this day I hate head bob in a fps. It's a cheap trick to make a game more realistic IMO.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I saw Quake 4 demo yeasterday I saw single and multiplayer and it seemed like quite solid 30 to me, certainly not as bad as people make it out to be...
I play the demo a couple of times to be sure so I'm almost positive it's the viewing angle that's making people sick here because that's exactly what it does for me.
At 480p the game looks fine and the fisheye effect isn't used. Although the framerate is much better is the viewing angle that makes it easier on my eyes...maybe I should say brain to process what I'm seeing.
At 720p a fisheye effect is in use I guess to cover up or deal with not rendering a wider frame/image. Look at any NPC from an off angle and the effect is quite noticable not that it isn't already...it's nauseating to me.
I hope Quake4 doesn't have this going in the game or I won't be able to pick it up for the X360...I'm pretty sure my hope is in vain. Maybe I should hope for a true 16x9 rendered frame/image for the HD resolution the next time the D3 engine is taken for a spin.
Oh...and the framereate does chug pretty bad at 720p. If the demo is any indication Quake4 is a better game on the PC more than likely.
At 480p the game looks fine and the fisheye effect isn't used. Although the framerate is much better is the viewing angle that makes it easier on my eyes...maybe I should say brain to process what I'm seeing.
At 720p a fisheye effect is in use I guess to cover up or deal with not rendering a wider frame/image. Look at any NPC from an off angle and the effect is quite noticable not that it isn't already...it's nauseating to me.
I hope Quake4 doesn't have this going in the game or I won't be able to pick it up for the X360...I'm pretty sure my hope is in vain. Maybe I should hope for a true 16x9 rendered frame/image for the HD resolution the next time the D3 engine is taken for a spin.
Oh...and the framereate does chug pretty bad at 720p. If the demo is any indication Quake4 is a better game on the PC more than likely.
inefficient
Veteran
Pozer said:
Off topic but Ken's Labrynth was not the wolf3d engine. It was Ken Silverman's own engine and he went on to write the BUILD engine for Duke3d, Shadow Warrior, Blood etc. He was the only other person acheiving anything close to what Carmack was doing at the time.
Johnny_Physics
Newcomer
inefficient said:
Not really, Carmack was doing Quake at the time.
Funny i actually feel sick when playing 60fps first person shooters with the timesplitters series being the worst offender.
A solid 30fps is the best for me.Of course QIV(360 version) does have a shitty frame rate but i've never felt sick playing it.
60 fps for driving games and fighting games,for everything else a solid 30 is enough,IMO.
A solid 30fps is the best for me.Of course QIV(360 version) does have a shitty frame rate but i've never felt sick playing it.
60 fps for driving games and fighting games,for everything else a solid 30 is enough,IMO.
Ken's Labrynth was released way before Quake, it was released in early 1993. Ken's build engine also predates Quake since Duke Nukem 3D was released roughly 6 months before Quake. Even though Carmack had of course been working on it for more than a year, Ken begins working on his build engine in early 1994, i.e. before DOOM II shipped.
Anyway, all this is academic since JC himself said Ken was probably the only person during that time period (93-96) he would hire without a second thought.
Anyway, all this is academic since JC himself said Ken was probably the only person during that time period (93-96) he would hire without a second thought.
Does Q4 still suffer from a poor frame rate when running in standard definition?
In theory at least the 360 gpu should be able to monster that game, given the engines heavy use of z-only techniques such as stencil shadows.
I'd wonder if it had been over optimized for x86 and absolutly falls apart on the ibm processor (being in order, etc). That said PC Quake4 takes advantage of multicore processors, you'd think this would help the 360 version moreso.
It seems odd because the videos of Prey show a damn near perfect frame rate, and this is also doom3 based...
In theory at least the 360 gpu should be able to monster that game, given the engines heavy use of z-only techniques such as stencil shadows.
I'd wonder if it had been over optimized for x86 and absolutly falls apart on the ibm processor (being in order, etc). That said PC Quake4 takes advantage of multicore processors, you'd think this would help the 360 version moreso.
It seems odd because the videos of Prey show a damn near perfect frame rate, and this is also doom3 based...
Johnny_Physics
Newcomer
Mordenkainen said:
Yes, and Ultima Underworld was released before Ken's Labyrinth, so what's your point?
Most of the things that made BUILD into the BUILD we know and like was implemented around the time that Carmack was hacking away at Quake so they weren't ever really working on the same type of technology. When Ken was doing Ken's Labyrinth in an engine similiar to Wolf3D Carmack was doing the Doom-engine that easily surpassed it. And when Ken had a competitor to the Doom-engine Carmack was already approaching the end of development for the Quake-engine. So he was a step behind, or half a step behind at least.
Johnny_Physics said:
My point is that you are mistaken about Ken being one step behind. Ken's first engine (what would become Ken's Labyrinth) was completed around 6 months after the release of Wolf3D. The first game to use that engine, Ken's Labyrinth's (which had better tech than Wolf3D), was released less than a year after Wolf3D and almost 12 months before DOOM and the build engine was started before Carmack started working on what would become the Quake engine and was ready long before Duke3D was released.
3DRealms allowed the beta version of Duke3D (called lameduke - http://www.3drealms.com/duke3d/lameduke.html) to be released; with it you can see for yourself that the build engine was pretty much done at the end of 1994 and the reason why it took another year for Duke3D to come out mostly for game polish and fixing game bugs(see DN4Ever saga). Even this early beta has features that only became available in Half-Life and Unreal, 3 years later.
Bottom line, both engines created by Ken were released shortly after id's equivalent engine but Ken's engines had more features than their "id equivalents". Someone is only one step behind if everything he does has already been done before.
Absolutely the case, if I was to make an estimative guess... Look at the intro sequence of Q4, there's a star background and a bunch of bodies and junk floating by (none of it very complex graphics-wise) and NOTHING else. Yet the game drops frames here and there, it's not silky 60fps! My PC which surely has a lot less raw performance (other than pure fillrate) runs this bit perfectly smooth.Graham said:
It would seem to me Q4 for 360 is nearly the exact same source-code as for the PC, with some minor utilization of the three cores. Obviously the graphics renderer has to be modified because there's no OpenGL on the 360, and sound might not use standard directsound interface either (though Doom3 used waveout instead and maybe Q4 does the same, I dunno).
Other than that, everything seems to run sub-par, I'd consider Q4 on the 360 the technical equivalent of R-Type 2 on SNES. Shoddy, rushed, poorly executed, badly optimized.
Johnny_Physics
Newcomer
I was going to say "half a step behind" but I didn't think it would be obvious what I meant with that.
Ken was always doing something that was an improvement on what Carmack already completed 6-12 months earlier and by that time Carmack had already moved on and started on something that was far better than anything Ken was doing at the same time. So he was always half a step behind.
Ken was always doing something that was an improvement on what Carmack already completed 6-12 months earlier and by that time Carmack had already moved on and started on something that was far better than anything Ken was doing at the same time. So he was always half a step behind.
Johnny_Physics
Newcomer
No, you're wrong, we were arguing who could beat up the other in a cage match. 
And in every message I wrote I thought about pitting Ken's Labyrinth and Wolf3D against Ultima Underworld, or Duke3D vs. Future Shock, but if I do that I open the door to a longwinded Doom 2 vs System Shock vs. Under a Killing Moon vs. Duke3D vs. Future Shock vs. Descent vs. Quake but then this arguement would never end and I would go insane.
And in every message I wrote I thought about pitting Ken's Labyrinth and Wolf3D against Ultima Underworld, or Duke3D vs. Future Shock, but if I do that I open the door to a longwinded Doom 2 vs System Shock vs. Under a Killing Moon vs. Duke3D vs. Future Shock vs. Descent vs. Quake but then this arguement would never end and I would go insane.
