Regarding performance
We're working diligently on performance, but improvements/fixes for performance are going to take a bit longer. The fact of the matter is, as a PC game we really pushed the boundaries on the game's content. I know a lot of people have said things like "well I can run game X at 100 FPS on the highest settings." Well that may be true, but game X is most likely a console port and designed to run on a much lower spec machine than RO2. Honestly gamers have gotten a little too used to console ports designed to run on 4-5 year old kit. Everyone talks about the golden age of PC games in the 90's. Well back in that golden age it was very common for a new game to come out that pushed the hardware curve, and people would just update to keep ahead.
Others have said "but I think game X looks much better than RO2, I don't understand why RO2 runs worse." Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, and whether someone thinks game X looks better than RO2 is usually down to whether people like our visual **** We don't go over the top with most effects, while other game studios make EVERYTHING from dirt to concrete shine like it's covered in vasoline or go crazy with their post processing. But at the end of the day, when you boil it down to cold hard data, RO2 is pushing more polygons, models, and shaders than most (if not all) other shooters currently on the market. To put it another way, there may be other games that are pushing more details on smaller levels, but we're pushing lots of detail in much larger levels than other games are doing.
With that said, there are improvements that can still be made, and there are things we could have done better before launch. In all of our testing internally the the game was running great on a wide range of hardware (for example, I have a five year old AMD FX-60 dual core with an 8800 sitting next to me that runs the game at a solid 50 frames per second). But as we have learned during the beta and launch there are certain types of PC configurations (even very powerful ones) that are struggling to run the game at a good framerate. So here is what we are working on to address these issues:
Level art optimization: for our levels we tuned our visual detail based on the test hardware we had in our offices. And for these machines the game ran great. But it turns out there are certain CPU's/video cards that frankly just choke on the number of objects we're throwing at them to render (even high end ones). It isn't that this hardware is bad, it just has different strengths/weaknesses than the hardware we developed the game for. So over the coming weeks we're going to be optimizing the levels to have less visible objects in view at one time, which should greatly increase the performance on these levels. Since this is a pretty extensive operation, it will take some time, and what you will likely see is us roll through 1 map at a time releasing an optimized version of each map.
General optimizations: we'll also continue to work on general optimizations to the engine/codebase itself. Some improvements will happen right away, others will be ongoing. This will be ongoing until we get to the point where we feel the majority of users are reasonably happy with the performance they are getting.
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=64026
FIRST PATCH COMING TODAY!:
Everyone,
I wanted to make everyone aware first off that we're hard at work addressing the issues that have been discovered since the launch. Additionally, we'll be releasing the first patch for the game today in just a little while. This patch will address among other things:
- fixing the day 1 unlocks not working
- spawn menu looping bug
- various crash fixes
- decreased AI MG accuracy for vehicle AI
To be quite frank with you it has taken us a little longer than usual to get an update out post launch. Without going into the boring technical details, the patching functionality built into UE3 is heavily geared toward consoles. So we've struggled a bit working out how to properly do patches on the PC, without requiring a massive download. Anyone in the beta remembers that every update for the beta was fairly large, and this is the reason why. We had thought we had all of this worked out before the final release, but that was not the case.
So rather than saddle you all with a multi-gig download for a small code patch, we've been slaving away on the patching system to get this issue resolved. Fortunately, it looks like we've finally cracked this issue, and will be able to deliver code patches to you all now without requiring overly large downloads.
So once again, you will see an update today, and many more to come. Thank you for your patience while we work diligently to get these issues resolved for you.
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=64025
From the Tripwire forums today, makes sense then why some are running the game well but others not so well. Good to see they are working on things already.
Log in to comment