What is UWE's plan on performance?
godrifle
Join Date: 2006-12-01 Member: 58815Members
Join Date: 2006-12-01 Member: 58815Members
The general consensus is that only high level rigs can play NS2 at a competitive level. UWE undoubtedly knows this. But what exactly are they doing about it?
How soon does UWE speculate that they can get a performance increase?
Are they prioritizing it properly, or hiring extra programmers to get the job done faster?
How soon does UWE speculate that they can get a performance increase?
Are they prioritizing it properly, or hiring extra programmers to get the job done faster?
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
In the meantime we also need to fix crashes that people are having, and address a large variety of compatibility issues (the joys of PC development) and fix a whole host of frustrating gameplay bugs.
It is a difficult balancing act prioritizing the tasks that our handful of programmers need to work on. If we only focus on performance, everyone will scream that we aren't working on gameplay balance, and if we don't continue to add new improvements and features players will get tired of the game. The game may be released now, but that doesn't change the fact that we still only have a small development team, with a lot on all of our plates. But we are as dedicated to improving the game as we always have been, it will just take some time.
Thanks.
--Cory
I find it difficult to understand why they developed their own engine rather than simply purchased rights to use some well-established one (Unreal 3, for instance) but I guess there were reasons.
I'm the OP and my questions/concerns were indeed answered, thank you.
<!--quoteo(post=2040827:date=Dec 5 2012, 11:33 PM:name=Squeal_Like_A_Pig)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Squeal_Like_A_Pig @ Dec 5 2012, 11:33 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2040827"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you don't focus all your attention on performance, people who can't play the game at all will move on. If you try and balance everything out evenly, people will grow tired of waiting for you to "get around to it" and the game will slowly die off. As seen in the charts in my thread above. Case and point.
<!--quoteo(post=2040835:date=Dec 5 2012, 11:49 PM:name=gio)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (gio @ Dec 5 2012, 11:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2040835"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Patience, friends. If you want to speed up the process, I encourage gifting UWE a couple million dollars to hire more programmers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, because the creators have no responsibility for releasing an unfinished/defective product. It's our duty as consumers to do their work for them. O.o
And the game is defective... Normally when a company makes a defective product they get sued. But it's okay in this instance apparently. I don't care if it means we had to wait longer. Do it right the first time.
<i>de·fec·tive - below the usual standard or level</i>
I have to agree with the balance vs. performance part here.
Those able to notice a change in balancing only will be those, knowing how to play the game and having played it for a long time. Out of a commercial point of view those players already invested a lot of their time, so it is most unlikely they will suddenly quit the game just because balancing isnt perfect. Let them complain so to say, as long as they bought the game and still are playing the facts prove you right obviously.
On the other hand - performance issues will turn people away that never really started to play the game as well. And it will make every pro-balancing issue pointless because a FPS thats stuttering basically cant be really competitive at the upper ceiling, no matter how well balanced that is. Performance issues ARE balancing issues.
No one is trying to be mean or demanding. I certainly don't want performance increases for my own benefit, as most of the games I play run at sub 30 fps (laptop gamer ftw). I want the performance increases for UWE's benefit, and to get more people playing.
it may already be too late though. I doubt a patch claiming the game "NOW RUNS AT 60 FPS!!!!" will pull many new players.
they could port the entire game to something decent (eg. idtech3) before they'll ever get decent performance (framerates / responsiveness / netcode / servers)
they could port the entire game to something decent (eg. idtech3) before they'll ever get decent performance (framerates / responsiveness / netcode / servers)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
idTech 3 is actually from 1999, that would not work very well. And licensing the newer idTech 5 is impossible as they stated idTech 5 will not be available for licensing.
Using another engine like Unreal Engine 3 would cost around $750k, a price that UWE certainly could not afford so easily. (Yes, the UDK is freely available, but releasing a game still requires paying Epic a certain amount of the income that NS2 would gather).
The Source Engine from Valve is much much cheaper, but their source code is a bit of a mess, it is not cleanly written.
Factoring in the amount of money required to purchase a third party engine license, as well as the amount of time required to learn that engine without even taking the time to mod it so that Natural Selection 2 would run well on it into account, simply did not outweigh the reasons for writing an own engine.
Now they have full control over the game, and due to the LUA implementation can change stuff really fast, and also only have the features they wanted, so the engine is not bloated with unneeded features.
However, the biggest performance issue of the spark engine is also the LUA implementation, as it is not precompiled code but interpreted code which, at runtime, gets translated line per line during gameplay.
I think it's safe to close this one.