The semantic complications of 'demanding' games. *spawn

[iroboto]

Lol this has got to be the biggest and longest troll by a user in a long time.

The argument or his position has never changed and it's 117 posts in with multiple forum users both lead renderers or other and still no budging.

 

[bunnybug]

See? You say we are past that, but clearly you are again on square one. You didn't understand anything, or rather you are unwilling to accept what you're told by many people, multitude of times. Optimized or unoptimized a game can be demanding. And it's that, only that, what determines if it's going to be easier to port. It's not how "impressive" you think it is that determines how hard a port would be. As long as a game is forced to run at say 900p@30fps on the PS4, it will always be more demanding than other PS4 games that run 1080@30fps. Devs don't choose to run on lower non-native resolution just because...

Who the hell can agree with his even sebbi says this is not true.

GTA5 has lots of simulated people and lots of cars and lots of other simulated systems running concurrently. The city feels alive. PS2 would never been able to achieve that. Last gen console versions had much less cars and people on the streets. You can't really simulate rush hour traffic without being able to simulate enough cars. Highways simply don't have enough cars in the last gen version to cause traffic jams. The city feels less alive.

Haven't got experience from Switch, but 3x ARM cores are likely a significant downgrade compared to 7x x64 cores for this kind of highly parallel city simulation workload.

If a game is using 95-100% cpu saturation on ps4, it's gonna be a real pain to a developers to get this thing running at a acceptable frame rate on switch. meaning harder to port. snake pass would be a much easier port, you don't to understand this for some reason, i gave you many example already, zone of enders launched at 720p/20-30fps on ps4, a little more optimization 1080p/60fps with a patch. as people have said already here you can 100% optimization but the game is too demadning for the hardware, it wont run at solid frame rate.

 

[iroboto]

If a game is using 95-100% cpu saturation on ps4, it's gonna be a real pain to a developers to get this thing running at a acceptable frame rate on switch. meaning harder to port. snake pass would be a much easier port, you don't to understand this for some reason, i gave you many example already, zone of enders launched at 720p/20-30fps on ps4, a little more optimization 1080p/60fps with a patch. as people have said already here you can 100% optimization but the game is too demadning for the hardware, it wont run at solid frame rate.

In another point of view. When a game was utilizing 100% of the X360 GPU how did it ever run with almost equivalent graphics and performance on the PS3 with an older and significantly weaker GPU? Under your argument it should never had happened.

 

[Benetanegia]

If a game is using 95-100% cpu saturation on ps4, it's gonna be a real pain to a developers to get this thing running at a acceptable frame rate on switch. meaning harder to port. snake pass would be a much easier port, you don't to understand this for some reason

That's one case and it's pertaining to the CPU, while you've been talking about the GPU mostly. 95% of AAA games don't need as much CPU as GTA does with all that AI going on. You made a generalized statement (you're doing it again) based on anecdotal evidence. For that particular reason GTA5 may be harder to port than Snake Pass (or they could simply have less people on the street), correct, that's one case. The rest of AAA games (i.e Doom, Battlefield, COD, Horizon) on the other hand, would probably be much easier to port since they already run much faster than Snake Pass.

And for instance, ARK an indie game is much more demanding on the CPU than GTA5. ARK is an indie game, and it would be much harder to port from a CPU POV. How does that fit into your narrative?

i gave you many example already, zone of enders launched at 720p/20-30fps on ps4, a little more optimization 1080p/60fps with a patch. as people have said already here you can 100% optimization but the game is too demadning for the hardware, it wont run at solid frame rate.

People didn't say that. You're putting words on their mouth. You "understand" what you want.
And Zone of Enders got optimized and as a result it ran faster, following exactly what I said about optimization and going completely against your own definition of optimization. So what are you trying now? It's hard to follow, you are making no sense.

 

[bunnybug]

In another point of view. When a game was utilizing 100% of the X360 GPU how did it ever run with almost equivalent graphics and performance on the PS3 with an older and significantly weaker GPU? Under your argument it should never had happened.

From my understanding cell made up for the lack of GPU power some how, probably freeing up resources for the gpu compared to 360, not sure? overall though both machine were pretty close over all in terms of power. never heard ps3 gpu was significantly weaker before.

http://www.redgamingtech.com/xbox-360-and-playstation-3s-graphics-card-gpu-compared/

there is a good read here.

 

[iroboto]

From my understanding cell made up for the lack of GPU power some how, probably freeing up resources for the gpu compared to 360, not sure? overall though both machine were pretty close over all in terms of power. never heard ps3 gpu was significantly weaker before.

http://www.redgamingtech.com/xbox-360-and-playstation-3s-graphics-card-gpu-compared/

there is a good read here.

I'll let the other guys chime in on this one, i can only summarize but these guys lived through it; But it's my example.

Overall, I think your confusing scaling with optimization when you are talking, and it's important to make the eventual distinction between workloads and optimization.

When hardware cannot handle the workload
You must scale the workload down and the result is impacted.

When you are optimizing you are reducing the workload without impacting the result.

You should watch lowspecgamer, some YouTube guy, runs games below minimal spec on PC.

He eventually finds the settings to make the game run on configurations that have no business running it.

So the optimizations are there but the workload is too heavy for the hardware so you scale down. It's not quite the same as an optimization discussion. Related sure.

But sebbbi is not implying one could optimize Crysis 3 to run on a 486.

 

[bunnybug]

That's one case and it's pertaining to the CPU, while you've been talking about the GPU mostly. 95% of AAA games don't need as much CPU as GTA does with all that AI going on. You made a generalized statement (you're doing it again) based on anecdotal evidence. For that particular reason GTA5 may be harder to port than Snake Pass (or they could simply have less people on the street), correct, that's one case. The rest of AAA games (i.e Doom, Battlefield, COD, Horizon) on the other hand, would probably be much easier to port since they already run much faster than Snake Pass.



People didn't say that. You're putting words on their mouth. You "understand" what you want.
And Zone of Enders got optimized and as a result it ran faster, following exactly what I said about optimization and going completely against your own definition of optimization. So what are you trying now? It's hard to follow, you are making no sense.

This 100% false, all these games run on a different engines. we do not know how those engines will run on switch or if they will even run, if those games were such an easy port as snake pass why did EA have to make a custom engine for fifa? and not just port the ps4/xb1 engines. Again we do not know the time, budget and skill the SNAKE pass port developers. I would bet they optimized the switch version way more since it was actually struggling to maintain a solid frame rate in some areas. who knows if if the developer just wanted the cheapest, fastest port possible, and were satisfied with the results.

I'll bring zone of enders again the code was demanding when it launched, after figuring out the hardware and taking more time it ran 1080p/60fp, code was demanding but once they optimized and took there time, ps3 ran it at 4x the power, the games you mentioned will never be able to that. i'm sure if those big thirdparty party games were as simple and fast to port, you would see some of the technically impressive games on ps4/xb1 ports exist but they don't, And all we have really is indi games that don't look technically demanding. We have a Titan fall 2 developer laugh at the thought of it running on switch, developers just don't seem to like porting there games to such under powered hardware. anyway i'm done arguing with you, we are not going any where.

 

[bunnybug]

I'll let the other guys chime in on this one, i can only summarize but these guys lived through it; But it's my example.

Overall, I think your confusing scaling with optimization when you are talking, and it's important to make the eventual distinction between workloads and optimization.

When hardware cannot handle the workload
You must scale the workload down and the result is impacted.

When you are optimizing you are reducing the workload without impacting the result.

You should watch lowspecgamer, some YouTube guy, runs games below minimal spec on PC.

He eventually finds the settings to make the game run on configurations that have no business running it.

So the optimizations are there but the workload is too heavy for the hardware so you scale down. It's not quite the same as an optimization discussion. Related sure.

But sebbbi is not implying one could optimize Crysis 3 to run on a 486.

We have seen games that are optimized run better on weaker hardware and run worse on more powerful hardware. People are putting too much stock on the code, instead, of developers, budget, time and specs, which is what the out come of the port is really all about. like the guy brung up snake pass as more difficult game to port then any AAA game on switch, only cause it ran lower resolution, not understanding there many reasons for that. like maybe they were just trying to brute force the ps4 version to 60fps/900p we have proof they were since game was running 45fps-50fps unlocked before, it didn't have enough time and budget and decided to just ship as it is. a code thats not well optimized has much more room for improvement then a code thats highly optimized, zone of enders is proof of that improved 4x fold in a few months

 

[iroboto]

We have seen games that are optimized run better on weaker hardware and run worse on more powerful hardware. People are putting too much stock on the code, instead, of developers, budget, time and specs, which is what the out come of the port is really all about. like the guy brung up snake pass as more difficult game to port then any AAA game on switch, only cause it ran lower resolution, not understanding there many reasons for that. like maybe they were just trying to brute force the ps4 version to 60fps/900p we have proof they were since game was running 45fps-50fps unlocked before, it didn't have enough time and budget and decided to just ship as it is. a code thats not well optimized has much more room for improvement then a code thats highly optimized, zone of enders is proof of that improved 4x fold in a few months

Code is the only stock we should be putting our effort into.

When furmark was released the code in that benchmark made GPUs literally melt. No GPU has ever been that saturated for that long. Stock coolers were not up to the job. code and the type of code is the difference between something being able to run and not.

Code, had a magnitude difference of exponential speed over slower code. We seldom have hardware in which we ask to run the same thing with exponentially less resources.

When a coder talks about demanding, and expensive. They are talking about objective things, like adding is cheap. But square root is expensive. Slower sorting algorithm are expensive. Cache misses are expensive. Array of structures is expensive. Using a garbage collection language is expensive. Generating objects on the fly is expensive.

do you know the difference in speed of Java vs C? In the thousands.

The magnitude order of speed difference code can have greatly outweighs the hardware difference.

That's like saying a formula 1 car will always beat standard vehicle. But it's the driver that takes the car around the track. If you have a shitty driver that car ain't going no where fast and it doesn't matter how fast it goes.

We have not put too much stock in code. Code is what hardware runs. Hardware isn't generating its own code yet. So of course it's the most crtitical piece there is.

Zone of Enders is not proof of anything. You've put too much stock in zone of Enders. You're welcome to find hundreds of examples where this happens. But you won't. You don't even know the whole story behind it. You don't know why it was running slow in the first place.

Your strongest argument for Zone of Enders is that it shouldn't have shipped in that condition. That's all you know. Most other companies would not have shipped.

You've never coded a game before right? Especially AAA? You would never know how tight the budgets are. How old the engines everyone is running. How limited some of the tools are.

You've got a ton of generaliations on how everything works. No one here denies that budget, and time are the most critical factors to success. They are. But I could spend years to try to optimize a game and sebbbi could spend 2 weeks and get the same game working better and faster than me.

There are limited resources in this world. You can't toss money at the problem if there are no resources available. Time. Sure you can spend more time. But if you don't got the guys with the talent, you're not going to make a lot of head way.

There are a very finite number of AAA graphics coders out there. Don't just wave those realities away. There are also a finite number of game coders, tool coders, AI coders out there, AAA generally pays squat compared to enterprise work. AAA demand the best but they pay amateur. It's not an easy sell and these companies only exist because of their employees love for games.

You have a definition of demanding. Programmers have their definition. You may not understand it. But that's because you don't have an objective basis for it. You look at the end result as your baseline for whether you think a game is demanding. Coders are looking at the code.

Between you're opinion of the end result, and the opinion of someone who spend 8 hrs a day looking at the code. I will always side with the person whose working with the code. They actually know what's wrong
You don't.

There's no real discussion here. You've got a subjective view of what is demanding. That's all there is to it.

 

[bunnybug]

Code is the only stock we should be putting our effort into.

When furmark was released the code in that benchmark made GPUs literally melt. No GPU has ever been that saturated for that long. Stock coolers were not up to the job. code and the type of code is the difference between something being able to run and not.

Code, had a magnitude difference of exponential speed over slower code. We seldom have hardware in which we ask to run the same thing with exponentially less resources.

When a coder talks about demanding, and expensive. They are talking about objective things, like adding is cheap. But square root is expensive. Slower sorting algorithm are expensive. Cache misses are expensive. Array of structures is expensive. Using a garbage collection language is expensive. Generating objects on the fly is expensive.

do you know the difference in speed of Java vs C? In the thousands.

The magnitude order of speed difference code can have greatly outweighs the hardware difference.

That's like saying a formula 1 car will always beat standard vehicle. But it's the driver that takes the car around the track. If you have a shitty driver that car ain't going no where fast and it doesn't matter how fast it goes.

We have not put too much stock in code. Code is what hardware runs. Hardware isn't generating its own code yet. So of course it's the most crtitical piece there is.

Zone of Enders is not proof of anything. You've put too much stock in zone of Enders. You're welcome to find hundreds of examples where this happens. But you won't. You don't even know the whole story behind it. You don't know why it was running slow in the first place.

Your strongest argument for Zone of Enders is that it shouldn't have shipped in that condition. That's all you know. Most other companies would not have shipped.

You've never coded a game before right? Especially AAA? You would never know how tight the budgets are. How old the engines everyone is running. How limited some of the tools are.

You've got a ton of generaliations on how everything works. No one here denies that budget, and time are the most critical factors to success. They are. But I could spend years to try to optimize a game and sebbbi could spend 2 weeks and get the same game working better and faster than me.

There are limited resources in this world. You can't toss money at the problem if there are no resources available. Time. Sure you can spend more time. But if you don't got the guys with the talent, you're not going to make a lot of head way.

There are a very finite number of AAA graphics coders out there. Don't just wave those realities away. There are also a finite number of game coders, tool coders, AI coders out there, AAA generally pays squat compared to enterprise work. AAA demand the best but they pay amateur. It's not an easy sell and these companies only exist because of their employees love for games.

You have a definition of demanding. Programmers have their definition. You may not understand it. But that's because you don't have an objective basis for it. You look at the end result as your baseline for whether you think a game is demanding. Coders are looking at the code.

Between you're opinion of the end result, and the opinion of someone who spend 8 hrs a day looking at the code. I will always side with the person whose working with the code. They actually know what's wrong
You don't.

There's no real discussion here. You've got a subjective view of what is demanding. That's all there is to it.

code is the most critical piece there is, but a code can be drastically be optimized. especially a code thats not taking advantage of the hardware properly. reading up on zone of enders, it was actually a different team thats patched the game that got a 4x boost

At the bold part i agree with you. which is why i don't agree a game running at lower resolution, is more demanding then a game running 1080p on the hardware, or it makes it a more demanding port for that matter. if i told you project setsuna and bomberman would be a more demanding ports for say 360, then say mario kart 8 switch or fast racing neo, because one runs half the frame rate and the other half the resolution would that make sense? many developers have different opinions, Titan fall 2 developer, who also worked on some big games, laughed at the thought of it running on switch,

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I've decided the discussion is a dead end. Points are just being repeated. Everyone knows everyone's view now and is free to accept or reject it, so no point discussing semantics further.