Here's a suggestion: Fix the stutter issue.

NicoRaynor · July 2018

This isn't some isolated bug. It's an ongoing issue that you've ignored for A LONG TIME and clearly made no efforts to fix. Deleting cache files and creating ramdisks to bandaid fix issues with the game is not something any of us should have to be doing when the issue is with your game. It should not be our responsibility to fix your product.

You're not EA. You made something fantastic, but it has flaws. You wanna be remembered as a good developer; fix the issues that keep players unhappy.

AnomalyDetected · July 2018

They have made many efforts to fix this. As stated by Obraxis in another post:

Obraxis wrote: »

With Subnautica, we were right up against a number of hard technical limits of the Unity engine. It was never built for open-world games and has some technical limitations on assets which we worked very hard to get around. So much so we had a 'counter' internally which would warn us when we went over the limit(s), at which point the game & engine would visually explode.

Adding more to the 'original' game would not be technically possible without a huge amount of re-writing of the engine and various underlying systems. We obviously, looked at all scenarios and what effort would be required for all the different ways of expanding the Subnautica story. Being as we wanted a separate adventure anyway and a large new area with a new protagonist, it makes sense from a technical standpoint to have it be separate (and much quicker to deliver to you guys).

They started with the unity engine, but as the game progressed, it became a holdback. I wish they chose another engine, so they could reduce the lag, but they can't really do much. They're still trying to optimize, so it may improve.

NicoRaynor · July 2018

I can sorta accept this, but it still comes down to making bad choices in the underpinning.

If you go into designing a product knowingly aware your product is going to encounter an inevitable problem that makes it impossible to progress further and yet still continue to use that base as your foundation, you can't act surprised when your customers get upset about it.

That said, they should simply make a sequel using a different engine that mirrors Subnautica; perhaps another crash landing on the same world and you follow in the footsteps of the previous game only with a bigger and deeper world to explore.

Lav · July 2018

NicoRaynor wrote: »

If you go into designing a product knowingly aware your product is going to encounter an inevitable problem that makes it impossible to progress further and yet still continue to use that base as your foundation, you can't act surprised when your customers get upset about it.

You're being ridiculous. Nobody designs a project while being "knowingly aware" of a blocking problem of this scale. Perhaps you happen to know a method to reliably predict blocking problems at a game's pre-planning stage? Cause then I will connect you with some people who will be happy to pay you a few dozen millions at the absolute minimum for your incredible know-how. But for some reason I think they're going to keep their money.

NicoRaynor wrote: »

That said, they should simply make a sequel using a different engine that mirrors Subnautica; perhaps another crash landing on the same world and you follow in the footsteps of the previous game only with a bigger and deeper world to explore.

That's a nice suggestion. What it actually translates into:

1. Different engine means different programming language (goodbye current team with actual technical experience in making Subnautica, let's start over with a bunch of newbies).
2. It also means tons of work converting current game resources (isn't it a joy that artists will spend their work hours converting and re-optimizing old resources instead of making new ones?).
3. And of course new engine means different limitations and completely new potential blocking problems that the team doesn't know about and will have to learn as they go.

PocketNerd · July 2018

NicoRaynor wrote: »

I can sorta accept this, but it still comes down to making bad choices in the underpinning.

If you go into designing a product knowingly aware your product is going to encounter an inevitable problem that makes it impossible to progress further and yet still continue to use that base as your foundation, you can't act surprised when your customers get upset about it.

With respect, that's simply not how software development works. Any application involves trade-offs; we learn not to chase perfect solutions because there aren't any. And every hour of development work has a realized dollar cost associated with it, so you can easily go broke while you chase those rainbows.

LeeTwentyThree · August 2018

I don’t think that you should be having stuttering. It’s not laggy at all for me.

I can run it on and old 2008 laptop. It usually suffers overheating and low FPS on video games. However, it runs subnautica fine. A newer “gaming computer I have actually runs worse than that one. I also think the graphics card seems to be the issue for most lag for people.

reveraster · August 2018

I agree with most other posters in this thread. The idea that they were knowingly aware of how severe that particular limitation would be is very, very assumptive. That said, even if they WERE aware of that fact I'm more than certain they balanced the effort needed to overcome that limitation against the effort needed to utilize a different engine for the project and found Unity to be the most sensible choice. They made an excellent product; based on that alone I would go out on a limb and say that I doubt they're amateurs.

Additionally, engine changes are obscene, and when people suggest them, it instantly makes a spectacle of their unfamiliarity with game design. An engine change is simply not an option, and suggesting it for the sequel as a resolution to one issue is unrealistic. You'd be fixing one issue by virtually turning over your entire staff, restarting on all of your assets, and throwing your codebase in the trash. It would be much more sensible to just augment the Unity Engine, which I'm sure is underway.

Lastly, "Simply make a sequel" is equally silly. There is no "simply" in programming of this scale. If you can find one, you should let me know. I'll send you my information and make you a job offer you probably won't be able to refuse. I'd do the same if you were so exceptionally knowledgeable of game engines that you could predict how severely cookie-cutter code limitations would impact the scope of my project and TTC.

McVitas · March 2019

yes please! A year later and it's still happening!

Here's a suggestion: Fix the stutter issue.

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