The semantic complications of 'demanding' games. *spawn

[bunnybug]

Pure speculation and nothing to do with hardware. It will all depend on how successful is the Switch, so far it seems to be doing very well. Wii U sold 14 million in its lifetime.

Snake pass is exactly like bomberman on switch. considering ps4 has games like doom, and battlefront running at 60fps those games look a generation ahead of it and have way more going on. The game is just not well optimized, just like bomberman on switch they couldn't get the engine to run at 900p/60fps so they dropped it 720p. meaning it was too demanding for the GPU, just like sebbi explained.

And your reply is about highly optimized means is laughable, a game running 20-30fps on hardware will always be called badly optimized, every game is optimized to some degree. honestly you make no sense.

 

[Benetanegia]

Snake pass is exactly like bomberman on switch. considering ps4 has games like doom, and battlefront running at 60fps those games look a generation ahead of it and have way more going on. The game is just not well optimized, just like bomberman on switch they couldn't get the engine to run at 900p/60fps so they dropped it 720p. meaning it was too demanding for the GPU, just like sebbi explained.

And your reply is about highly optimized means is laughable, a game running 20-30fps on hardware will always be called badly optimized, every game is optimized to some degree. honestly you make no sense.

You are the only one not making any sense and you are back to square one regarding the points made in this thread. Go back and read it again, I'm tired of you running in circles.

 

[bunnybug]

You are the only one not making any sense and you are back to square one regarding the points made in this thread. Go back and read it again, I'm tired of you running in circles.

I don't know whats not making sense to you. The majority of optimizations you mentioned (i.e using less CPU/GPU cycles, bandwidth reduction, register pressure, etc.) are invisible to the naked eye, so unless you are developing the game, how would you know? highly optimized is looking technically impressive on that particular hardware for it's specs and running at a solid frame rate 30fps or 60fps, it's simple. if the game is not running well which is most important thing it's called badly optimized, if running at lower resolution then 99% of the other games on the hardware and not looking technically impressive it could be called that as well.

 

[Benetanegia]

I don't know whats not making sense to you. The majority of optimizations you mentioned (i.e using less CPU/GPU cycles, bandwidth reduction, register pressure, etc.) are invisible to the naked eye, so unless you are developing the game, how would you know? highly optimized is looking technically impressive on that particular hardware for it's specs and running at a solid frame rate 30fps or 60fps, it's simple. if the game is not running well which is most important thing it's called badly optimized, if running at lower resolution then 99% of the other games on the hardware and not looking technically impressive it could be called that as well.

You are not making any sense, precisely for things like the bolded part. How is that even relevant? So if it can't be seen by the naked eye, it doesn't exist? It does nothing? Do you even hear yourself?

And no, highly optimized doesn't mean looking impressive at all. It means using less resources to achieve the same results, period. As a consequence of using less resources to do "something", the game can run faster or the spared resources can be reallocated to "something else", maybe making the game look better, but making the game look better is not optimization, it's just an opportunity gained thanks to optimization.

That part that seems to fly over your head over and over and over, to the point that it's really tiring and painful for all of us. Before optimization the software is using all the relevant resources (something that constantly flies over your head, despite several people telling you time and time again), after optimization some of the resources may be liberated and may later be used for something else (i.e. making the game look more impressive), but again and for the millionth time, unoptimized code is also using the resources fully, which is why the game runs slower or at lower resolution.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I wasn't talking about indie , I was talking about results of all ports so far on switch. My prediction comes from history of AAA ports on 360,PS3, and wiiu.

Wii U ports were likely cheap and nasty because the market wasn't there for them. As has been iterated numerous times, if the investment in Switch is equal to the other platforms, the quality of the optimisations will be equal.

And your reply is about highly optimized means is laughable, a game running 20-30fps on hardware will always be called badly optimized...

That's nonsense. A game can be highly optimised but just too taxing for the hardware. eg. A realtime raytraced game could run at 20 fps and yet use the hardware 100% utilisation at 100% efficiency with the most sophisticated GPU compute based raytracing engine possible.

 

[Goodtwin]

Even if publishers/developers had good intentions with Wii U ports for launch, Nintendo's tools and documentation were horrendous. Not top of that, the SIMD performance of the Wii U was abysmal compared to the Xenon and Cell, and likely would have required a ton of custom code to get the framerate up. Lots of work means lots of cash. Its not like the games were unplayable, so the shipped product just had subpar performance. This was most likely acceptable to the publishers seeing as how getting the performance up to snuff would require a significant investment, and doesn't really add much marketability to you game, the decision was most likely pretty easy. After launch publishers were watching the Wii U tank pretty quickly with no real reason to believe things were going to turn around anytime soon. This made investing lots of resources into ports even less likely than at launch.

after optimization some of the resources may be liberated and may later be used for something else (i.e. making the game look more impressive), but again and for the millionth time, unoptimized code is also using the resources fully, which is why the game runs slower or at lower resolution.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

@Shifty Geezer

Can you elaborate on your lighting example for your game that could tank the framerate on Switch to 15 fps. I ask because this is a good example of creating an effect that is demanding, and not just underutilizing the hardware. If you could follow up on the process of how you would go about optimizing that effect to get the framerate up that would be excellent. I think a quick 101 lesson on how developers achieve the desired effect while using less resources is required if this discussion is going to go much further.

 

[bunnybug]

Wii U ports were likely cheap and nasty because the market wasn't there for them. As has been iterated numerous times, if the investment in Switch is equal to the other platforms, the quality of the optimisations will be equal.

That's nonsense. A game can be highly optimised but just too taxing for the hardware. eg. A realtime raytraced game could run at 20 fps and yet use the hardware 100% utilisation at 100% efficiency with the most sophisticated GPU compute based raytracing engine possible.

Do you have any proof wiiu ports were cheap and nasty? Considering it was the majority for wiiu ports, ran worse, seems like almost every port that was demanding on the cpu was bottlenecked. As for the market not being there, how do developers know this? It's only after there game bombed they would know this, is was getting way more AAA games then switch as well, which still has none announced so far

Trying to do to much for the hardware can be called not properly optimized, nobody is gonna call a game running a game running 15-20fps highly optimized because that results in a game thats unplayable, not making the best use of the hardware.

 

[milk]

Trying to do to much for the hardware can be called not properly optimized, nobody is gonna call a game running a game running 15-20fps highly optimized because that results in a game thats unplayable, not making the best use of the hardware.

Yeah man, a technically uninformed neck-bearded game reviewr might throw the word "unoptmised" around as a blanket term to mean the game performs poorly.
But here you are discussing on a technical forum, about actual technical speculation, with technically focused users, multiple of them actual game developers and graphical programers. They know what goes on under the hood, and proper use of language is a common and necessary part of their work, and to communicate effectivelly on technical discussion, terms have to be used as what they actually mean and not like what the youtube game reviewr perverted the term to mean to his cheeto-fingered audience. Real programmers use that language daily, and are here telling you you are wronf, and yet you try to school them based on "how would I know what the code is like based on naked eye? - derp".
Yeah, you don't know, because you are a layman. They, however, do.

 

[function]

Trying to do to much for the hardware can be called not properly optimized, nobody is gonna call a game running a game running 15-20fps highly optimized because that results in a game thats unplayable, not making the best use of the hardware.

You could absolutely have a game where scripting, assets, culling, shaders etc were highly optimised but the game ran at 15-20 fps.

And on the WiiU a port could have been highly optimised but still been CPU bottlenecked owing to the CPU being weaker than on the platforms that the game was designed for.

And your reply is about highly optimized means is laughable, a game running 20-30fps on hardware will always be called badly optimized[snip]

Only by people who's opinions are grounded in ignorance and who belong on Game FAQs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can you elaborate on your lighting example for your game that could tank the framerate on Switch to 15 fps. I ask because this is a good example of creating an effect that is demanding, and not just underutilizing the hardware. If you could follow up on the process of how you would go about optimizing that effect to get the framerate up that would be excellent

I start with a couple of Unity default post effects like bloom and chromatic aberation. These stacked drop a Nexus 7 down to 30 fps, but the nVidia Shield Tablet can handle them fine. For my shadows, I'm drawing the scene into a low resolution (1/16th) rendertexture and running a shader that draws the scene scaled from normal to zoomed in around the light source over 60 steps. I then draw this over the background nebula into a quad, and render the scene proper with the quad drawn as that background. If I run this 1080p with bloom, framerate drops notably from 60 fps (dunno if it's VSync'd down to 30 or not). If I render the whole scene half res, it's fine.

I can stack on top of that a warp effect that drops framerate even more.

I don't know where the bottleneck is, whether bandwidth or the shaders or Unity overhead on multiple passes. Blur can kill framerate though, which is a pain as it's valuable in many effects, and I need it to smooth out my shadow jaggies!

Today I learnt how to get alpha blending working on rendertextures though (my custom normal-mapped sprites weren't being drawn on rendertextures), so I can rejig how I do things a bit. And if I duplicate the previous shadow pass by alternating buffers, I can get the same quality as 64 draws in ~8 by halving the offset each time. I'll have to see if this makes a significant difference in performance. Then I'll accumulate a few frames of shadow and maybe jitter them for quality. So I'm looking for alternative routes to up quality and down overhead.

But I'm optimising at a very crude, high level, as many indies, just trying to find better ways to do something. It's akin to finding a better sorting algorithm. Better optimisation will understand the hardware, fine tune shaders, pack data formats, etc. progressing from a good algorithm to an ideal way to execute that algorithm on the hardware. Some games out there are doing great post effects on mobile, so it's doable if you know how and can spend the time on it. If I'm honest, I shouldn't be! I should be getting a public alpha out and then worrying about making it prettier, by all accounts.

Do you have any proof wiiu ports were cheap and nasty?

Do you have any proof that they weren't? Given neither of us has proof, we can only go with logical speculation, which is that a platform that isn't selling well that hasn't got great game sales isn't going to attract significant investment on its ports. Unless you can present a decent argument to that (Yes, a game could only sell at best 1/8th PS360's numbers, and realistically far worse because Nintendo, but devs would invest just as much in the game anyway...), it's pretty obvious the reason most ports ran far worse was port quality.

 

[bunnybug]

You could absolutely have a game where scripting, assets, culling, shaders etc were highly optimised but the game ran at 15-20 fps.

And on the WiiU a port could have been highly optimised but still been CPU bottlenecked owing to the CPU being weaker than on the platforms that the game was designed for.



Only by people who's opinions are grounded in ignorance and who belong on Game FAQs.

Even have Shifty Geezer calling wiiu ports cheap and nasty, cause they ran worse, does he belong on gamefaqs as well? most people want there games playable, why make a game too taxing for the hardware to not run properly?

Yeah man, a technically uninformed neck-bearded game reviewr might throw the word "unoptmised" around as a blanket term to mean the game performs poorly.
But here you are discussing on a technical forum, about actual technical speculation, with technically focused users, multiple of them actual game developers and graphical programers. They know what goes on under the hood, and proper use of language is a common and necessary part of their work, and to communicate effectivelly on technical discussion, terms have to be used as what they actually mean and not like what the youtube game reviewr perverted the term to mean to his cheeto-fingered audience. Real programmers use that language daily, and are here telling you you are wronf, and yet you try to school them based on "how would I know what the code is like based on naked eye? - derp".
Yeah, you don't know, because you are a layman. They, however, do.

My point about seeing it in the naked eye, is how would you compare games? we can't compare codes? because it's something we never see, the only real way to determine something is highly optimized is by seeing results and comparing them to other games, it's impossible to tell what games are doing under the hood unless the developers tells you everything, and it's something most developers don't do.

time, unoptimized code is also using the resources fully, which is why the game runs slower or at lower resolution.

We are way passed that, i gave you examples already, snake pass, and bomberman, it couldn't run 1080p on switch, because t's unoptimized code using full resources.

 

[function]

Even have Shifty Geezer calling wiiu ports cheap and nasty, cause they ran worse, does he belong on gamefaqs as well

WiiU was seen as a risk and so port budgets were limited. This exposed the WiiU's weaknesses to very direct comparisons with code intended for other platforms.

.. why make a game too taxing for the hardware to run properly?

Too taxing? As in too demanding?

 

[bunnybug]

WiiU was seen as a risk and so port budgets were limited. This exposed the WiiU's weaknesses to very direct comparisons with code intended for other platforms.



Too taxing? As in too demanding?

Isn't the switch in the same exact situation, except with the specs having a huge disadvantage in specs compared to 360 to wii u ports.

yes too demanding, which was my point about switch ports that are highly demanding on ps4 gpu/cpu won't run well, on switch, but everyone here is saying if it's optimized enough it should run well.

 

[function]

yes too demanding, which was my point about switch ports that are highly demanding on ps4 gpu/cpu won't run well, on switch, but everyone here is saying if it's optimized enough it should run well.

I don't think everyone is saying what you think they're saying.

 

[bunnybug]

I don't think everyone is saying what you think they're saying.

Read the thread. the whole argument is about AAA ports that are highly optimized on ps4, gpu/cpu should be a struggle to get it running well on switch, compared to games that look less optimized for ps4, snake pass, bomberman, and setsuna. I think we can all agree its gonna be a difficult for developers, with such a huge spec difference, the fact we haven't seen anything announced yet is pretty telling.

 

[milk]

My point about seeing it in the naked eye, is how would you compare games? we can't compare codes? because it's something we never see, the only real way to determine something is highly optimized is by seeing results and comparing them to other games, it's impossible to tell what games are doing under the hood unless the developers tells you everything, and it's something most developers don't do.

For comparisons limited to the appreciation of on-screen results, use terminology that is appropriate to that sphere of analysis. Demanding has to do with code. If you can't discuss code, don't use terminology of that sphere of discussion incorrectly generating confusion for no good reason.

 

[bunnybug]

For comparisons limited to the appreciation of on-screen results, use terminology that is appropriate to that sphere of analysis. Demanding has to do with code. If you can't discuss code, don't use terminology of that sphere of discussion incorrectly generating confusion for no good reason.

We can discuss code it's fine, but in the end the day many here in this very thread even are using results by eye, most games will called unoptimized by the results. Bombermn or snake pass for example, are being called that because results are not what you expect from the hardware.

↑

 

[Benetanegia]

We are way passed that, i gave you examples already, snake pass, and bomberman, it couldn't run 1080p on switch, because t's unoptimized code using full resources.

Oh, are we? You didn't say anything that would make us believe that is the case. In fact, that is a complete 180 from what you've been saying previously. That sentence and your claim that optimized AAA games would be harder to port than poorly optmized indie games cannot coexist within the same logic. That sentence and your definition of demanding can't coexist either. So what is what?

yes too demanding, which was my point about switch ports that are highly demanding on ps4 gpu/cpu won't run well, on switch, but everyone here is saying if it's optimized enough it should run well.

No one has said that it would run the same as in the PS4. And in fact, no one has contested the notion that porting games that are demanding on the PS4 would be somewhat harder than games that are less demanding. The discussion has never been about that. You've been told that it is posible to port demanding games though, since games that are very demanding on the PS4 have successfully been ported to switch already. Enter Snake Pass. The mess that ensued came from your insistence on redefining the meaning of "demanding" and "optimization".

 

[bunnybug]

Oh, are we? You didn't say anything that would make us believe that is the case. In fact, that is a complete 180 from what you've been saying previously. That sentence and your claim that optimized AAA games would be harder to port than poorly optmized indie games cannot coexist within the same logic. That sentence and your definition of demanding can't coexist either. So what is what?



No one has said that it would run the same as in the PS4. And in fact, no one has contested the notion that porting games that are demanding on the PS4 would be somewhat harder than games that are less demanding. The discussion has never been about that. You've been told that it is posible to port demanding games though, since games that are very demanding on the PS4 have successfully been ported to switch already. Enter Snake Pass. The mess that ensued came from your insistence on redefining the meaning of "demanding" and "optimization".

Again snake pass is demanding the same way bomberman is on switch, it's because it's a badly optimized code, it's demanding for all the wrong reasons. now bomberman is a demanding game on switch because they had too drop the resolution to 720 to run at 60fps, should i use that as an example of a demanding game being ported to say 360 for example? and being proof that 360 can handle switch demanding ports really well?

 

[Benetanegia]

Again snake pass is demanding the same way bomberman is on switch, it's because it's a badly optimized code, it's demanding for all the wrong reasons. now bomberman is a demanding game on switch because they had too drop the resolution to 720 to run at 60fps, should i use that as an example of a demanding game being ported to say 360 for example? and being proof that 360 can handle switch demanding ports really well?

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...