Discussion of "Hardware survey"

First of, http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/5240 was nice thread idea I think.
So here a thread to chat about it, without spamming up the list of reports/pc specs and mixing everything.
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Below is of course just my interpretation.

To me it seems like many players report that they play at:
-very low details
-low fps, on the edge of lagging out
-sometimes both


I write "many" instead of exact numbers because was not sure how some posts are to be interpreted so numbers would not be exact anyway.
This for example is quite obvious:

quote: Performance is good (>30 fps) up until the lategame in big team games. Your typical Folsom Damn at 50 minutes still grinds down to ~4fps or worse.

but this is harder to interpret:

quote: My current system runs between 60-80 FPS, without any real issue until you hit crazy numbers of units

because not sure what "crazy numbers of units" is: just a regular game, a regular game with above average unitspam or something that basically never happens like 20v20 on speedmetal.
So any counting/statistic would be influenced by personal opinion anyway.

So even without exact numbers it is a bit shocking that so many players can not enjoy the game how it is meant to be played: With decent and smooth graphics.
Some players report super FPS on ultra settings but that is with very new computers.
Reports of good FPS at minimal settings are imo also "on the bad side", since with such settings the game is so ugly that many gamers will not even consider playing it.
"Minimal" should be for used in rare situations, like on a LAN party and the game absolutely must run on the crappiest computer so that everybody can play together.
It should not be used by so many for regular playing, this makes me sad.

Whenever performance was discussed in spring the main points were:
-"it is 2008 / 2010 / 2013, this-and-that is standard in computer hardware now"
-"yes, it is high polycount/large resolution/high memory usage but it is not that much and worth it"
-"yes, this lua eats some FPS but not much"
etc

But apperently:
-spring player's computers are not as good as everyone thought
-the sum of all the small things is larger than was expected

Also to me it is unexplainable how people can* actually play like that.
My computer is bad/old too, but if a game runs at 5-10 FPS that would be unbeerable to me.
Of all the players who had such performance I can not imagine that many said "hm, I still want to play this, despite the dia show."

Many players don't care about the looks and from my experience many use low graphics to make things easier to recognize. I don't see why you'd feel sad about players preferring low graphics and a clear battlefield over tons of graphic effects when in the end even super-high graphics can look silly because of explosions sometimes being drawn beneath the terrain and similar little issues.

quote: Many players don't care about the looks

Or maybe:
"Many current players don't care about the looks" because those who do, do not play.

If things are so hard to recognize (you mean models?) and players prefer icons, that should be taken as hint that things should be made more recognizeable.

I do not think graphics are irrelevant to the average player.
If there are, what was the point in making nicer models, effects, maps.
People understand that nice screenshots and videos are prefered by players, why should it be different with the ingame graphics?

Also seeing how many report so low fps, I do not think that all put minimal settings because they like it so much. More like, they need to.

/sarcasm, lol.

No need for sarcasm..

For example "recognizability of stuff and 'clear' graphics" is a concern that was raised in every spring game ever, since the beginning.
It is not like "professional artists" are needed for that, I am sure spring modders could do it too. It is just that recognizability was often put behind other factors like realism or consistency or just wanting to do more of an existing style.
Concerns were traditionally shrugged off with "nah, it will look ok ingame", "you will get used to the units", "the animation will make it clear", "zoom in to select, zoom out to give order" etc.
It seems players found a different solution:
"play with icons all the time"

The performance of the engine is known. Nobody should be really surprised that smaller games lag less than a large games.
Would be naive to make a demanding game or settings and hope that somehow the engine performance increases so much that everybody can play in decent settings.

Personally I don't have any problems with recognizability, I play (largely) with icons because that's how far I need to zoom out to get a good view of the battlefield. Units are simply too small at that distance.

I have no problems whatsoever identifying the units unless I am zoomed all the way out of Delta Siege.

It looks like the problem is the engine being too slow. This is nothing new, but it remains a problem. Do we have any players of ZK that develop the engine (apart from Cleanrock)? Perhaps we should be diverting attention towards getting working multithreading into the engine. Every time we look at performance problems it comes back to the engine and it never gets any better. Currently the game itself if fine, there are currently no huge flamewars over balance, so maybe the ZK developers could get a look at the engine?

If the engine became faster then hopefully this would not be a problem.

quote: No, it's an important point that the artists are professional. You need to pay to get the art you want, otherwise you get the art the artist wants.

Artists have always been given feedback when they post wip shots or design guidelines. Usually they seem happy about feedback.
Maybe the guidelines were just not thought through enough.
Similiar with effects:

quote: excessive use of particles, shiny things, lup effects and such take away attention.

Effects were meant to convey/give information, not to overshadow it.
Like the graphics of an explosions tells you how much damage/AoE it has, lups flames show you when a unit is losing health because it is on fire.
But now players are turning all that off?
Imo if players turn something off, it is a hint something is wrong.

quote: It looks like the problem is the engine being too slow. This is nothing new, but it remains a problem.

That is not what I see from the survey:
Most players report okay performance in small/medium matches.
The problem is only in large matches or lategame.
Appearently the difference can be 30 fps -> 4 fps. Even for someone with supercomputer that does 240 fps it can go down to 20.
So it is not uncommon that players fps go up and down by a factor of 10 or so.

Just think about it:
One game you have good fps, next game only 1/10 of what you had before.
So some players could probally run better graphics, in some of their matches.
But you never know if your next match will be a large one where you need every FPS you can get.

Here is what I have been through so far.

Laptop, i7, 1.60 GHz 4GB Ram Nvidia 230gm
I see FPS issues in very long team games and always when the chucking hell spawns (very playable but messy). Most of the Graphics settings are on except for shadows, water effects and obviously antiALIasing 8}. The laptop weights 1000tons and sounds like a sewing machine so..

Desktop i5 2.3GHz 4GB Ram, ATI HD4350
Same as above Except ONLY IF I reduce the graphics to all the way to the bottom. Load times are longer than above but are fine as far as I am concerned. Don't want to play on desktop.

Now my favorite machine is the all new Core 2 duo 2.5GHz. 4GB Ram. And it does have GPU and it does load the game.
I say again, it does load the game and I can see units and ground and hear sounds etc. But the problem is that the game lags terribly when I move my screen to see a "rock" or a "mountain". But looking at nano particles, commander, fleas and complicated structures such as a "tick" gives me no problem.
With 5 hours of battery time and the ability to do all my work on that laptop which weights like the sense of weight in the quote "He rushes like a shitball" I would definetely love to play on that Core 2 duo.

Besides that, I am very satisfied by the performance of the game on an average machine of year 2009---201x

quote: -"low graphic settings are okay, gameplay is more important" imo: partly yes, but only to a point. This is far beyond that point. It seems strange how playing on low settings is almost defended as being a good thing Oo Usually the goal is that players can play the game in nicest looking and smoothest way possible. -"the problem is the engine being too slow." imo: unrealistic

I do not really understand the inner workings of the game but I don't see that there is anything that can be done about performance with the game. Especially considering that people could allegedly play on 86.0 with no performance issues whatsoever I don't see how it could be anything but the engine.