I find it reassuring to hear when it is communicated that such problems are on the radar.
Sometimes one might think that feedback is not being heard by developers.
Shader Compilation on PC: About to become a bigger bottleneck?
- Thread starter Flappy Pannus
- Start date
I find it reassuring to hear when it is communicated that such problems are on the radar.
Sometimes one might think that feedback is not being heard by developers.
They fixed it in Sackboy
store.steampowered.com
Sackboy™: A Big Adventure - Sackboy: A Big Adventure - November 9th Patch is Now Available - Steam News
Our latest update is now available to download and includes fixes for stutters relating to shader compilation, other bug fixes and new Costume DLC content.
I'll be the judge of that, lol.. but good to hear!They fixed it in Sackboy
Sackboy™: A Big Adventure - Sackboy: A Big Adventure - November 9th Patch is Now Available - Steam News
Our latest update is now available to download and includes fixes for stutters relating to shader compilation, other bug fixes and new Costume DLC content.
@Dictator thank you!
Can't wait to see @Dictator take in this.
IF they've really fully fixed the problem then 3 things spring to mind.
1. Well done to Alex and DF for highlighting it which could well be what directly led to the fix.
2. If it was so easy to fix, why did it ship in this state?
3. Kudos to the devs for acknowledging and quickly fixing the issue regardless.
IF they've really fully fixed the problem then 3 things spring to mind.
1. Well done to Alex and DF for highlighting it which could well be what directly led to the fix.
2. If it was so easy to fix, why did it ship in this state?
3. Kudos to the devs for acknowledging and quickly fixing the issue regardless.
Perfectly said. These are exactly questions that developers/publishers need to be pressured on.
Regardless of that, Alex and DF deserve a thank you regardless. I have 100% no doubts at all their video is directly what resulted in this update (will wait for it to be confirmed first).. but at least now we know the developers are aware of it.
And absolutely... while games should NEVER release in this state, we don't know the exact circumstances of everything, so any developer that acknowledges and fixes the issue after the fact deserves praise.
Rootax
Veteran
What about Kudos for the devs making engines/games without such crappy stuttering in the first place ? I really don't believe Sackboy devs deserve praise, they're just fixing their own mistakes. And it was so quick that I'm pretty sure it was a well known problem before launch, has to be. Not everything is on editors/publishers wanting crazy launch date.
Well in today's world everyone is awesome and failure is always down to some untenable circumstances beyond their control. People love to ignore that it's always the same developers who consistently deliver high quality products and the same developers delivering mediocre to poor products when both are playing by the same rules with the same limitations. The only difference is the personnel.
They obviously deserve the highest praise.
If devs aren't acknowledged for doing the right thing - even if it is just a matter of fixing their own mistakes, then what motivation would they have in future to fix issues?
Obviously we'd prefer the games to launch with no issues at all, but that's not always going to happen in the real world so it's better they be encouraged to fix issues quickly where they do slip through.
The great thing about this debarkle is it should make a lot of other devs sit up and take notice so that we see a reduction in such issues in future.
In related news, DSOG are saying the stutters are gone:
First Sackboy: A Big Adventure patch fixes its shader compilation stutters
Sumo Digital has released the first PC patch for Sackboy: A Big Adventure which fixes the game's awful shader compilation stutters.
www.dsogaming.com
Just thought I'd chime in about Sonic Frontiers, if anyone was maybe on the fence about getting it and worried about shader stutter... but I can confirm there is no stuttering whatsoever in Sonic Frontiers.. shaders or otherwise. The game runs really smoothly, despite being locked to 60fps.
I'm still waiting for 100% confirmation that Sackboy's shader compilation stuttering has been fixed. I've checked the Steam forums, with some users saying yes it's 100% fixed, and some others saying nope.. it still stutters.
DSOGaming, a PC focused news site, said in their article that yes, it's actually fixed, but I'm still not sure. I don't trust random people enough to know how to properly test this with clean caches, so I guess I'll wait until one comes along.
I'm still waiting for 100% confirmation that Sackboy's shader compilation stuttering has been fixed. I've checked the Steam forums, with some users saying yes it's 100% fixed, and some others saying nope.. it still stutters.
DSOGaming, a PC focused news site, said in their article that yes, it's actually fixed, but I'm still not sure. I don't trust random people enough to know how to properly test this with clean caches, so I guess I'll wait until one comes along.
With this type of issue, unless they're doing shaders of the entire game at startup, then likely it's not a fixed/not fixed binary choice but rather the problem has been greatly alleviated by shifting compilation to some background async tasks or something.
Re: Sackboy Update
I cannot possibly know if EVERY shader has been cached (I am not going to play the whole game to find out), but now they burn all threads at 100% as the game is starting, making the first game start longer as they chew through shaders. I only tested without RT on, but the first level and cutscenes no longer had shader compilation related stutter on a Ryzen 5 3600/RTX 2060 S machine.
[Complete driver wipe with DDU, shader cache deleted via Disk Clean.]
Alright, that's good to hear, thanks for checking! Seems like I'll be purchasing this game after all then.
I'm going to grab it in the hopes that if there is still some stuttering, that at least the team is aware of it, and will work to stamp out the remaining ones in the future.
Purchased the game. Played the first cutscene and first level, and it is indeed perfectly smooth. Very happy so far with it!
But now the question remains as to why it released like that in the first place... This is a real issue with PC gaming at the moment. We have to get past this "release games first, and fix later" type of thing that's happening all too often.
It just goes to show a LOT of this particular issue can be avoided and overcome when the developer is essentially forced to deal with it.
Also, I'd like to say, this is a beautiful game. Lovely presentation!
But now the question remains as to why it released like that in the first place... This is a real issue with PC gaming at the moment. We have to get past this "release games first, and fix later" type of thing that's happening all too often.
It just goes to show a LOT of this particular issue can be avoided and overcome when the developer is essentially forced to deal with it.
Also, I'd like to say, this is a beautiful game. Lovely presentation!
I imagine the immediate and heavily negative response over something that was apparently so easy to fix will have been an eye opener for some devs. I doubt this particular studio will be making that mistake again. Unfortunately for them it won't be easy to shake off that stigma now of this being a broken game despite the issue being fixed mere days after launch.
On the subject of issues, how is the frame pacing issue that Alex mentioned? Are you running with his recommended fix? I can't remember exactly what it was. Something like matching the frame cap to the monitor refresh rate?
Indeed. I think there's a few developers which this applies to. Double Fine with Psychonauts 2, Neon Giant with The Ascent, a few others I can't remember off the top of my head, and now hopefully Sumo Digital with this game. In all cases these developers seemed to be quite forward and interacted with their audience. Taking in feedback and working on the issues until they were essentially resolved. Hopefully they've all learned a lesson with regards to Unreal Engine and how to properly do it from the start to avoid these issues. I believe they have.
And yea, unfortunately the game released in the state it did, and it turned a lot of people, myself included, off from the game. Luckily I'm the type of person who keeps an eye on the games I like, so when issues get fixed, I support the developers for doing so. And of course I credit DF's video for this. I mean, it put it right out there.. very plain to see how bad it was. Hard to ignore that. This game had a lot going against it, so it's really no wonder why it failed pretty hard. It simply released in a terrible state, and at a time where there are a boatload of games coming... and Sony sandwiching them between their other big releases one after the other didn't help, but I'm happy to support them now that this issue seems to be largely addressed. Most people will have already moved on.
As for the frame pacing issue, I'd honestly forgotten about it from Alex's video. Basically I first ran the game essentially maxed out without RT (because I thought the RT might exhibit some shader comp issues, I tested without it first) and my PC maxes out the fps at my monitors refresh rate (175hz) at 3840x1600.. so I didn't notice any bad framepacing. It's essentially a smooth line across the board. But that said, I was mostly just focusing on looking for any large shader related stutters and didn't find any. There's some little TINY spikes at sometimes which are essentially unnoticeable. I didn't notice any juddering, but I'll keep an eye out.
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
Edit: n/m, answered
Yep. It's not 100% perfect, but very very good now. Like I said there are small spikes here and there, which I'm not sure are even Shader Compilation related at this point. There's also quick hitches that happen when you're browsing through new costumes for the first time in the menu. You can see the hitch, but it literally doesn't really affect anything, because it's in the menu. It's as if it just takes a fraction of a second to load the new costume. Lots of games have these hitches when in menus.
So yes, it's not perfect. It can still be better for sure. Hopefully the devs will continue to update it and smooth it out, but for me personally, I'm pretty satisfied.
Although I don't like the fact that when you start the game up the PS Studios and Sumo Digital intro videos are literal choppy slideshows. I'd prefer they show the videos (and allow us to delete them/skip them) and then have a short static screen with the Sackboy title, and then choppy-it-up until it's loaded and ready to go.
This is one game where I think DirectStorage, and GPU decompression would really help.
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
Not sure why it would be a good candidate? It doesn't stream textures to any large degree, and it's CPU usage is exceedingly low. DS would not help the choppy videos during shader compiling.
Why you ask? Because it can definitely load much faster than it does. Check the PS5 version compared to the PC version.
Notice how when the game loads the fps drops to ~30-40? I'm not sure if loading is tied to FPS as it is in so many other games, but disabling vsync and letting the game fly with an unlimited framerate, I'm running at over 300fps, and when it brings up the loading screen transition it drops to 30s-40s and stutters as it does it's thing. Yes, the CPU is absolutely going mostly unused during the loading... and I bet it's the decompression which makes it chug, not the compilation. These transitional animated loading screens in games, I believe, will perform much smoother once DirectStorage 1.1 is used.
And who says the game is compiling shaders during the intro videos? It does it literally every single time the game is loaded up.. not just the first time. It could just be a bug. It wasn't like that the first time I loaded the game up. It actually didn't start doing that until I downloaded the Kratos/Atreus and Nathan Drake/Chloe DLCs that it started doing that, weirdly.
Edit: ...actually, I bet I know what it is... probably connecting to that stupid Epic Online games BS...
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 doesn't stutter 'cos of shaders compilation, it's an excellent game after all, but if you switch settings it's not unusual that the game starts to load the shaders for the campaign (haven't tried multiplayer, but I think it doesn't have that issue), which might take a while.
